Biometric! Crackdown! on Illegal! Immigrants!
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, NZIS & Immigration issues
In a headline that would bring pleasure to the ears of many Daily Mail or Daily Express readers, encapsulating many of the papers favourite subjects, NZ is to crack down in illegal immigrants, and share the information with the UK.
So what is behind the headlines?
Many (economic) refugee’s arriving in UK/Europe have in the past ‘lost’ their passports while on the flight over. Thereby making it very difficult for immigration authorities to prove who they are, or whether they are genuine refugees. Net result, they spend a protracted time in Europe while their refugee case is investigated and they can’t be returned to the country they flew in from. Since they don’t have a passport and their actual country of citizenship can’t be proven one way or the other. You can’t put someone on a plane and send then ‘home’ without a passport unless you can prove that the country you are sending them to is ‘home’.
One way to avoid this problem is by finger printing all non-resident arrivals. So when someone shows up without passport, you can potentially prove who they are, without their co-operation. The Americans have been doing this for a while, whether you need a visa before you fly or not.
(Which is why we refuse to fly through the US on the way back to the UK, and apparently we aren’t the only ones, because AirNZ started Flying Via Hong Kong a few years back to cater to people who refused to fly via Los Angeles).
What the NZ sharing of information means here is that if someone turns up in Australia on one passport, and whether they seek refugee status or not, then try and enter NZ on another passport (or ‘lose’ their passport on the plane to NZ) – the NZ authorities will be able to check their fingerprints with Australia when the person first entered. By return, the Australian authorities can then check NZ records. Net result, fewer ‘undesirable’ people are let into either country. Undesirable here is anyone who isn’t traveling on a genuine passport that belongs to them and correctly identifies them.
This helps with the bigger issue of criminal gangs establishing what appears to be genuine travel records on a fake passport. Using a patsy means that when the real criminal wants to enter a country, the passport looks used and genuine. Unless of course finger prints are taken each time. In which case Immigration authorities can determine that you’re using a fake passport. And you suddenly become ‘undesirable’.
The scope is being widened, to include Canada, the UK & the USA. Which casts a much wider net.
Why you may ask, is NZ part of this? Surely there aren’t that many criminals trying to sneak into the US via NZ? or the other way around?
Well, NZ has often been seen as a bit of a soft target for criminals looking to enter other friendly countries, or for obtaining fake passports. And NZ, for all it’s anti-nuclear stance, is still part of the friendly intelligence community. So the net result is that NZ passports are considered friendly, and less suspicious. NZ sharing finger print info is more likely to be of benefit to the other countries when checking on people arriving there, than of benefit to NZ for people arriving here.
So, NZ cracking down in illegal immigrants is more about stopping people using fake passports and keeping them out of any friendly country. Rather than turning a tide of economic refugee’s, which to be honest we really don’t have here.
But the headline was good!
Related posts:
- Seems the ombudsman gives a crap about some immigrants.
- Silver Fern Visa – Still causing mayhem for immigrants
- INZ – what are they drinking down there?
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