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Comment by dreamdu5t | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why customs needs this.. it's perfectly legal for them to just take whatever they want or deny whatever they want entry for no reason as I understand it.

If they don't want Occupy videos they can just reject them. This form isn't needed to accomplish that.

What is its real purpose?

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It has been widely speculated that the customs form that they pass out on the airplane en route to the USA is not about stopping bad guys but about getting them to lie on official paperwork so that there is a documented crime to cite as a reason to deport/jail them.

Pretty much my initial thought on this. As with pretty much any other declaration.

What about about the customs form you get when flying from the USA to another country?

The ones here in Uruguay and especially Argentina are mostly concerned about illegally entering or withdrawing cash (US Dollars mostly).

You have to declare cash above a certain amount, and I believe excess cash can be confiscated.

There are also other questions (for example: if you're bringing animal products - we had very damaging outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, the mad cow scare, etc)

That's exactly what is on the customs forms going into the US, too. Of course, that doesn't fit into the conspiracy theories.

The I-94 form asks such questions as "have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies", "have you... procured or attempted to procure a visa or entry into the U.S. by fraud or misrepresentation?", and "are you seeking entry to engage in criminal activities?"

http://www.immihelp.com/visas/i-94w.html

That's not a customs form, to clarify.

Wrong form. The customs form is 6059B.

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/vacation/sample_declaratio...

Yes, I know. I'm fairly confident it's the form tedunangst referred to, and to travellers, the distinction is mostly academic, since they're both handed in at customs.

It's there because old laws require it, and customs enforces the law. You can't amend the law in Congress, because changing immigration or obscenity laws are opening Pandora's box to all sorts of nonsense. It happens all of the time -- New York had a law on its books until a few years ago that affected auto leasing that was based on an 19th century problem... Rented horses whose poor training or health caused accidents. Because of this law, you could hold a car company liable for an accident -- which made it impossible to lease cars in New York! Changing the law was held hostage in the legislature for many years.

If you declare that the shipment doesn't contains "bad" things, and it does, and it's inspected, than yes you'll be guilty of filing a false instrument or lying to a federal agent -- serious crimes. That's just the reality of life, not a conspiracy as others have implied.

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