Airport Pickup
Once an email is received from you, expressing a request
for airport pickup, our Intake Coordinator will send a reply
email to confirm the request.
The confirmation of request will also contain a form which you will have to fill in, detailing the date of arrival and flight numbers/times.
Once we
have scheduled a volunteer to receive you at the airport, we will follow up again with another
email to confirm the pickup, giving you the name and telephone number of the person who
will pick you up from the airport.
Our airport
pickup person will meet you at the baggage claim area. He/She
will be holding a sheet of paper with your name on it along with
our organization’s name - ISF. Go up to that person and
introduce yourself. You are almost at your new home now!
If for
some reason, (due to traffic or bad weather), your pickup person
is late, please stay around the luggage claim area. You can also
make a phone call to us from any of the public phones along the
baggage claim area (you will receive our c/o number when we confirm
your airport pickup).
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Special considerations:
If your first point of entry to the United States is NOT Cleveland:
- Due to privacy laws here in the US, our
volunteers will not have access to information as to what alternate
flight you are taking due to missed connections.
- Because of the lengthy immigration process at many airports, we REQUIRE
you to call the person picking you up AFTER clearing Immigrations
and Customs at the airport of arrival in the US. Only then will
we know if you are able to catch the connecting flight into Cleveland.
- We will NOT go to the Cleveland airport until we hear from
you. In order to make the call, you can purchase a phone card
from inside a shop at the airline terminal. The least expensive
phone cards are around $5 or $10 dollars. We will provide the
phone number of the person picking you up when we confirm pickup
arrangements.
If your first point of entry to the United States is Cleveland:
- If your first point of entry is Cleveland (i.e.
this is the first US airport where you land), we will come to
the airport only after you clear Customs and Immigration.
- You will call your contact person listed in the email confirmation, stating
you have arrived and cleared Customs in Cleveland. However, there
is no need to purchase a phone card. Phone calls are local for the
Cleveland area and will cost 50 cents. Clearing Customs and Immigration
can take anywhere from ½ hour to one or even two hours,
depending on the number of people traveling, the number of immigration
and customs officers available etc. Please try to understand that
we are doing this to minimize inconvenience to our volunteers who often show up
at the airport only to find that the student did not arrive on
the flight as scheduled.
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