The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Friday it wants to expand its preclearance program to Japan’s Narita International Airport, which would allow visitors from Japan to clear customs and immigration before getting on the plane.

The benefit of preclearance is visitors arriving from Narita spend less time at the U.S. airport where they arrive and could possibly arrive at domestic terminals, including the Kona airport, which no longer has scheduled non-stop flights to Japan.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said the U.S. intends to enter into negotiations to expand air preclearance operations to ten new foreign airports, located in nine separate countries: Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

"Expanding the preclearance program is both a security imperative — enabling CBP to stop potential threats before they arrive on U.S. soil — as well as a strong economic opportunity," Homeland Security said in a news release.

“We’ve been pushing for preclearance for two years, and it has gone from pie in the sky to reality,” said Sen. Brian Schatz. “This is the first step towards making it a lot easier for Japanese visitors to come to Hawaii. Although work remains to be done, this also has enormous implications in terms of our efforts in establishing direct flights from Japan to Kona.”

“The fact that that the United States will go forward in working to expand preclearance to Japan’s Narita International Airport is a good news for Hawaii’s tourism industry, the economies of our state and nation, and visitors from Japan who are eager to visit Hawaii,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono in a news release.