A customs area is an area designated for storage of commercial goods that have not yet cleared customs. It is surrounded by a customs border. Most international airports and harbours have designated customs areas, sometimes covering the whole facility and including extensive storage warehouses.
For the purpose of customs duties, goods within the customs area are treated as being outside the country. This allows easy transshipment to a third country without customs authorities being involved. For this reason, customs areas are usually carefully controlled and fenced to prevent smuggling.
However, the area is still territorially part of the country, so the goods within the area are subject to other local laws (for example drug laws and biosecurity regulations), and thus may be searched, impounded or turned back.
Read more about Customs Area: Other Uses
Famous quotes containing the words customs and/or area:
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“The area [of toilet training] is one where a child really does possess the power to defy. Strong pressure leads to a powerful struggle. The issue then is not toilet training but who holds the reins—mother or child? And the child has most of the ammunition!”
—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)