{"id":263018,"date":"2017-10-25T06:06:31","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T20:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=263018"},"modified":"2017-10-25T06:06:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T20:06:31","slug":"toves-apc-machines-saipan-airport-not-busted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/toves-apc-machines-saipan-airport-not-busted\/","title":{"rendered":"Toves: APC machines at Saipan airport not busted"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_263019\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-263019\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/APCs-pix.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/APCs-pix-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-263019\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-263019\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. Customs and Border Protection for NMI director Robert Havens at the arrival area of the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport where the Automated Passport Control machines are. (Bea Cabrera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>All Automated Passport Control machines at the arrival area of the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport are operational, according to Commonwealth Ports Authority board member Barrie Toves.<\/p>\n<p>Toves, who chairs the board\u2019s Airport Facilities Committee, was quick to belie reports that the machines do not function.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll seven [machines] are operational. The sign that says \u2018out of order\u2019 is under the direction of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to divert arriving passengers [in the afternoon] to\u2026undergo immigration processing through a CBP officer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>CPA installed the machines last July to speed up the processing time of in-bound passengers that go through U.S. Immigration upon entry, especially in the early morning flights when arriving tourists come in the thousands. Afternoon passengers go through the usual immigration processing with a CBP officer.<\/p>\n<p>MVA board member Chris Nelson reported seeing the \u201cout of order\u201d sign on the machines during Monday\u2019s board meeting, after arriving from Guam on the 12:10pm flight last Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was at the airport and\u2026there was a sign on every single one of the [machines],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Toves said that CBP has cited two reasons for not allowing the use of the APCs in the afternoon: one, the number of arriving passengers in the afternoon flights are manageable and can go directly to a Immigration officer; and two, there are no Saipan airport ambassadors available to assist the APC users.<\/p>\n<p>When there are no \u201cairport ambassadors,\u201d U.S. CBP does not allow the use of APCs. Currently, the airport\u2019s three airport ambassadors are available only from 1am to 5am, with no one in the afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happens is when the passenger needs assistance at the APC kiosk and there is no ambassador, [U.S. Customs and Border Protection for NMI director Robert] Havens is forced to pull out one of his men from duty to help the passenger when there are a good number of customs officers in the booths that are available,\u201d Toves said.<\/p>\n<p>The Marianas Visitors Authority introduced and fielded Saipan airport ambassadors in August to assist passengers through immigration processing and Customs inspections.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, CBP will continue to disallow the use of APC machines in the afternoon unless an airport ambassador is around to assist passengers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All Automated Passport Control machines at the arrival area of the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":263019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8300,7332,408,2130],"class_list":["post-263018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-apc","tag-barrie-toves","tag-border-protection","tag-cbp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}