After a long flight, the prospect of standing in a line as travelers trickle through customs and immigration can seem exhausting. It’s an unavoidable part of international travel, but smart travelers do have some strategies for getting through quickly.

Here are five ways to speed your way through customs and immigration.

Pick Your Seats Strategically
The biggest delay going through customs and immigration is the line of people because your entire flight, and possibly others, all go through at the same time.

Pick your seats with an eye on being among the first off the plane. You can do this by looking up your flight on a service like seatguru.com to see where the doors are and which seats in your section are closest. Then check in to your flight online as early as possible to pick your preferred seats. Once you exit the plane, move quickly to snag a spot in the front of the line.

Do Your Paperwork on the Plane
On almost all international flights, the flight attendants will hand out the necessary paperwork on board before landing. Keep a pen and your passport easily accessible in the bag under your seat so you can get everything filled out before you deplane.

Be Courteous and Direct at Immigration
Once you reach the immigration desk, have your paperwork and passport ready to hand to the immigration officer. Answer any questions honestly and briefly, without any long-winded explanations. Chances are they’ll ask a question or two, stamp your passport and wave you onward without much hassle.

To Declare or Not to Declare
You encounter customs after passport control, and the officers have a few primary roles: looking for illicit items, such as drugs, collecting taxes on certain goods and preventing the spread of pests that might be piggybacking on items like fresh produce. In most cases, you only need to declare certain things on the customs declaration form, like agricultural products, commercial merchandise, large quantities of cash or high-dollar items purchased abroad. It’s a good idea to write down any food you’re carrying, just in case, but otherwise, the average dive traveler won’t need to declare anything and will get waved through without a second look.

Tech Solutions
For U.S. citizens coming back into the States, there are some modern tech solutions to help you get through U.S. Customs and Border Protection more quickly. The first is Global Entry, a pre-screening program that allows you expedited entry into the country. It’s open to U.S. citizens, visa holders and citizens of a handful of foreign countries, but Global Entry membership requires a background check, pre-screening interviews, fingerprinting and an application fee, so it’s best for frequent travelers. A simpler — and free — option is downloading the Mobile Passport app for your smartphone. You can use the application to fill out your paperwork and answer questions electronically, then snag a spot in the — usually much shorter — Mobile Passport lines that are available at 24 major U.S. airports.