I just got through reading an article about the brand new “E-Gate Program” at the Cancun airport and thought it was worth a blog post.  The E-Gate program is only being tested at the Cancun and Mexico city airports in Mexico as another way to ease the immigration process for international tourism.

According to the article, this new program would only require 30 seconds of a traveler’s time in being processed for immigration upon arrival instead of the long waits some of us have had to endure when getting off of our flights.  Do you remember standing in the immigration line for an hour at Terminal 3?  I do.  While the addition of Terminal 4 has helped in this situation, the new aides to the immigration process for international arrivals would be very welcomed.  We all want to start our vacations as quickly as possible!!

The new E-Gate process sounds very similar to what is already in place at LAX immigration when I return from Mexico–you walk up to a machine, place your passport on an optical reader, the machine takes your picture, asks some questions, and you get a printout.  This procedure at the Cancun airport has you walk up to a machine, place your passport on the optical reader, place your finger on the machine for a fingerprint to be recorded, and off you go.  Sounds a lot better than what’s already in place.

The article states that the Cancun airport hopes to get this system totally operational by the winter season of 2022.  While my next trip to Cancun is in October, it is unlikely I would be processed in this way, but I will let everyone know if there are any changes to the immigration process in general.  Even if the E-Gate system is not fully operational, I am counting on the new process which has already been in place of doing away with the Tourism Card.

See you in Cancun!!