Why do some countries require everyone entering to see a customs officer, and some don't?

Question

When you arrive in somewhere like the Norway or France, and go to leave the baggage area, you'll find yourself with a choice of two lanes for customs. One will be Red and labelled something like Goods to declare, the other Green and labelled something like Nothing to declare. If you take the red lane, you'll need to speak to a customs officer. If you take the green one, then you'll walk past customs officers (possibly behind a one-way mirror), but unless they decide to check out, you'll keep walking and won't speak to anyone.

With some other countries, such as the USA, Australia and India, before you can leave the customs area you must queue up for a customs officer. Depending on the country, they might take a form, or they might ask you some questions, but you'll have to wait to interact with them, even if they then direct you to exit without further checks.

For passengers, the first style of customs is much more preferable, as if you've nothing to declare then you can often exit the baggage area through customs in seconds. For passengers, the second style of customs is much less popular, as even with nothing to declare you might end up waiting a long time (30+ minutes not impossible in the USA) to see a customs officer who then waves you through.

Why do some countries opt to make passengers wait, while others are happy to let passengers self-identify if they need checks + use random & targeted checks to catch people not properly declaring?

Answer 1

My informal observations suggest that France unilaterally scaled down checks on its land borders a long time ago, both for immigrations and customs purposes (including on the border with Switzerland, even before it joined the Schengen area or formally associated with the EU). International airports and “external” borders are still actively policed for immigration purposes but not as much for customs. So in general, it's clearly not something France is ready to spend heavily on.

Having lived for a long time in a border town, I know a few customs officers. That's anecdotal of course but it seems that the received wisdom among them is that meaningful catches only come from informants/tips/investigations. They still do some random searches and quite a bit of profiling to deter small time fraud and because they have to but, rightly or wrongly, it would readily explain why systematic checks are not considered to be an effective use of resources. The context is a bit different but the same rationale would apply to red/green channels in airports (I don't know anybody working for the customs at an airport, incidentally).

As to why other countries do not follow the same policy, I can only surmise that it comes down to the context (smaller border/fewer border checkpoints relative to the size of the country), objectives (ensuring the effectivity of the law as a matter of principle rather than simply recovering as much contraband/duty as possible) or perhaps politics (e.g. being seen as tough on everything border related is more important than convenience to travellers or saving money).

Answer 2

It also depends on what you are trying to keep out, specifically only the really dumb criminals get caught in customs. but there are some things that If you want them kept out require more diligence, but when my mother flew back to the United States from Belize They were checking all bags for meat. (There was a slight hiccup here as my mother had been caught in a hurricane which although it had not damaged her canned goods, it did remove the labels.) On another flight this time coming back from England, the concern was mad cow, and my mother had been jogging through the countryside. They confiscated the plastic bag she had been carrying her shoes in to keep her suitcase clean, scrubbed her shoes with some obnoxious chemical, and gave her a new clean bag. I am not sure what I think about the meat from Belize, but I appreciate the thing with the shoes.