Without this system, intelligence, alerts, and lookouts would be lost or not available on a timely basis. Law Enforcement agencies may not be able to detect criminal elements not only on the border but at numerous other locations throughout the country. Increases in smuggling or narcotics and other prohibited merchandise, money laundering, and commercial fraud would be a real possibility. The Traveling Public would be adversely affected as advanced passenger information used for targeting high risk passengers may be unavailable should Customs, air carriers and cruise ships systems fail due to Year 2000 related problems. Most of the payments to and from Customs are automated.
Filers transmit payment authorization electronically.
The payer's account is debited and the Customs account is credited with the amount due, requiring no paper payments and no cashiers. To revert to manual processing of checks would adversely impact not only cash flow to Customs but would result in an overwhelming increase in labor costs for both Customs and the payer's banks to process the millions of checks generated daily. The accuracy and timeliness of payment data would also be impacted. One Customs system edits broker transactions against classifications established by the Census Bureau. The classification parameters are generally measured against tariff numbers.