Most of us know, and I believe the CBP website even says that a Form 4457 has no "expiration" date, once you list something on the form, it is listed...as far as CBP is concerned. I have several with no expiration date in the top right corner. The "expiration" date on my most recently acquired 4457 for hunts in Zim and SA, shows an expiration date of 9/30/2022. The powers that be in some countries want to see an expiration date and it must be in the future. A friend is going on a couple of hunts in countries that want to see an expiration date and is a bit worried. They called a CBP office and pretty nuch got the runaround. so, I called the CBP office at DFW and asked for one of the officers that I've dealt with on a couple of occassions and explained the problem to him, and asked if "new" forms would be available before the end of September. He said he had heard nothing about new forms (and told me once again the form doesn't expire) and said it took almost 5 years for the current form to be approved and distributed. I passed this info on to my friend. Traveling to these countries with a firearm might be very interesting after this September. The same friend sent me a picture of the signature page of their brand new passport this morning noting that on new passports, on the signature page, the picture of an eagle, the American flag, the stalk of wheat and the words "We the People” have been deleted. They also said they find it interesting that our government can make all of these deletions on passports yet can't manage to issue updated Form 4457's. I agree.

Me too!

Ha!
I made a 200 mile trip today to have a new 4457 signed by a customs agent. On handing the agent my completed form he looked at the date and asked; where I was going and when.
I told the fellow I would arrive in in Johannesburg on Sept 30. He said "wait here I'll see what I can do with this form". It turns out he made a small sticker covering the the date that now says 9/30/23 and stamped over it with his official stamp, my form has two red stamps now!

I can an easy work-around to this issue and I’m sure others can, too.

quote:

Originally posted by K Evans:
I can an easy work-around to this issue and I’m sure others can, too.

It's not difficult.

If they would just put an expiration date on them that's 25 or 30 years from now I wouldn't have to visit them again. As it is, I have to go back year after year to get new 4457's for the same rifles.

I retired from working for the Feds. That expiration date is an OMB (Office of Management and Budget) requirement. OMB periodically reviews official forms to see if they are still needed or require modification. The date you see is when the form is due for review. Agencies routinely use up their stock of the old forms after that date until they are gone then start using the newer forms with a new expiration date.

The higher ups in RSA and possibly other countries can't seem to grasp this concept. For many years they accepted the old forms regardless of the so call expiration date. Then for some unknown reason RSA started viewing it as an expiration date of what they call your US firearms license.

Have some other countries started doing the same thing?

All it would take to solve this problem is for this statement to be printed on the form:

"This certificate does not expire and is valid for the life of the person herein named."

But that would be too simple.

In Harare last month the Qatar airline employee was looking for my "certificate number" on the 4457 as their forms have a space for it. Used the CFR form number .

just got off the phone with US Customs and in October they will have a new form with a new expiration date coming out. in the mean time my local agent said if it was him he would just copy the current form with the expiration date and white out the date and go with that or print in a new date but make sure it matches the printing on the form closely