OK, I'm looking at flights for my fiancee's trip to the US with me and I have a question. Let's say you take flights from Manila to Los Angeles that connect in Hawaii, with a couple of hours layover and a plane change. I'm assuming that since you don't leave the airport in Hawaii, you don't go through immigration there and therefore it is not your POE. But wouldn't the two flights be in different terminals (international vs. domestic?), and is so, Hawaii would be your POE. If not, the flight from Hawaii to LA is a domestic flight since it begins and ends in the US, so how does immigration in LA know who on that flight is entering the country and who is not? How does this work?

The first airport that your flight lands in on US soil is the POE.

In your example, if you land in Hawaii you will disembark and go through Customs and immigrations in Hawaii before boarding the domestic flight to California. When you arrive in California your plane will go to the domestic terminal and you will make your transfers or leave the airport with out having to go through Customs and immigrations again.

I would think that Hawaii would be the POE, it is an international airport. The flight from Hawaii to the mainland would be a domestic flight. I never even thought about using Hawaii as a stopping place when I go to and from the Philippines and have never seen it offered when I looked for flights.

Hawaii would be the POE, she would be arriving at the international treminal. go thru customs and immigration, then transfer to the domestic terminal. the only way Hawaii would not be the POE, is if it was just a refueling stop with no passengers disembarking the aircraft.

Ok a related question. At St. Luke's they ask your "intended port of entry" on the forms. Does anyone know why they ask that and what they do with that information? The only thing I can think of is that because they do exams for US, UK, and Canadian VISAs, maybe they need to know what country you are going to so they can prepare the proper papers for the corresponding embassy. I would imagine a lot of people taking their exams don't actually know their POE city at exam time, but they would know the country of course.