Full Crew Immigration

February 23, 2012 – Full Crew Immigration

There are five words that strike fear into the hearts of most crew members. The first two should hardly surprise you. The phrase “Abandon Ship” is one that you never want to hear. I expected that. The final three words, however, were completely unexpected.

Full Crew Immigration! This specter causes the knees of experienced crew members to grow weak. It is a plague that they truly don’t want to face. And yet they must face this beast every three months during which they sail in and out of US ports. Every three months, US Immigration requires the entire crew to go through a full crew immigration. That means that at one stop in Bayonne every 90 days all 1230 crew members must proceed through US immigration.

To get a sense for the size of this task, imagine that three or four 747 airplanes landed at the same time in the same place and every passenger had to go through immigration at the same time. Then imagine that they landed in an airport the size of Colorado Springs, which does not process international flights and certainly would not have the space for it. Now you have a sense for why this is such a frightful task and dreaded by those who live on ship.

The planning started a week in advance. Laura called a team meeting, because not surprisingly, HR is in charge of this process. We are accustomed to processing 80-100 departing crew members each Turnaround. But now we had to process twelve times that number. And, please don’t forget that the crew couldn’t simply stop working for the time it took to get this done, as we still had to ‘turn’ our ship, get 2900 people off, clean and reset the ship from stem to stern, top to bottom, and load 2900 new guests on, all in the space of less than eight hours. So, our first meeting was to discuss the horrors of previous full crews, all a bit overwhelming to me, the one staff member who had not jousted this windmill before.

The battle plans were drawn up with a precision that would have made any invading force proud. We analyzed venues, sketch out logistics and traffic patterns, and assessed personnel. Without question we knew it would take more than the four of us to herd this many cats. We asked for one volunteer from each major division and soon doubled our team. We conducted a team meeting including these volunteers two days before we went to battle and ensured that each person knew their role and responsibilities. One of the keys to any chance at success was keeping traffic flows predictable and orderly.

However the phrase ‘please stand in a line’ means very different things in different cultures. Most often the line resembles an ugly mob from the time of the French Revolution, with our department playing the role of the nobility. When I suggested that we simply had to be firm and tell them we would stop the process until the people stood in an orderly line, the wiser heads in the group smiled ruefully at this unschooled neophyte and suggested that I might just want to try that some time, certain that the next ship board phrases I would learn were ‘crew mutiny’ and ‘walk the plank.’

The night before the event our HR team descended on the Sky Lounge which would be our immigration waiting room, and on Sky B, the large conference room which would hold the immigration officers and their respective queues. With hefty rolls of masking tape we marked the floor with waiting lanes and finally five lines to lead to each immigration officer. We moved furniture in each venue to help guide the flow. Then we spent an hour walking around the crew areas in the ship placing directional signs on how best to proceed to and depart from the immigration zone. Finally, we posted signs indicating exactly what times each department should arrive in the hopes that no one would have to wait too terribly long. Something less than an hour each would be appreciated. The estimated time for the entire ordeal was 3 ½ to 4 hours.

We entered the battle zone the next morning at 0629 hours. We hoped to get a jump on our crew by at least fifteen minutes, only to find a few already in Sky Lounge awaiting our arrival. We finally docked at 0723 and 20 minutes later the five immigration officers arrived on Deck 14. After a brief conference they assumed their positions and we began handing out passports to the first group. The first group is always American citizens and green card holders as they are ushered through much more quickly. Then we processed the approximately 100 sign-offs who needed to leave the ship to catch flights. This left now only about 1100 crew members who had to quickly return to work and were of foreign passport.

As the onslaught began we steeled ourselves but found that we were falling quickly behind as the queue to enter the waiting area grew and the lines at the immigration tables expanded exponentially. But with a little bit of practice our flow and pace picked up. The major problem we still faced, though, was the mob-style atmosphere that was occurring despite our handsomely constructed masking tape lines. I was in charge of Sky Lounge and finally I had enough. I put myself between the French mob and the frightened nobility and issued this bold decree, “Ladies and gentlemen we are stopping the distribution of passports until you form a SINGLE line. Unless you are staring at the back of the head of the person in front of you, you are not, I repeat, you are NOT in a line.” The reaction was predictable. Nobody moved. They all stared at me without a note of comprehension with a few bordering on rebellion. But in the finest tradition of martyrs throughout history I held my ground with visions of stones, clubs and flames filling my brain. Remembering that everyone is motivated by self interest I then continued, “The people who line up right in front of me in a single line will be the FIRST to get their passports.” I’ve never seen a line form so fast. With a renewed sense of order I quickly started to disseminate the masses to their respective passport distribution stations. The process worked so well, however, that I soon could not keep up with our efficient volunteers.

Forty-five minutes after the process began, we suddenly realized we had an empty waiting room. Laura quickly started calling departments scheduled later and implored them to send us employees as fast as possible. People were almost jogging when they reached Sky, and with only a minute or two of waiting received their passports and were ushered into the immigration room. Soon we realized every passport had been distributed, the lounge was empty and we were just approaching two hours since the process began. We released our volunteers and returned to Sky B, where the last 30 crew members were waiting to be processed. Less than 2 ¼ hours after the process began . . . we were done!

This time, in the battle of good versus evil, good had won. The windmill had been properly jousted, the dragon had been slain. Before we need to face that beast, again, we will set sail for Europe for different and generally lesser immigration travails. Through Laura’s great planning and our team’s resolve to not quail and quake in the face of the onslaught, we enjoyed a record-setting immigration process.

Bring on the next Full Crew Immigration . . .

The adventure continues . . .