e-Borders cause more confusion
Why do we bother?
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Eugene Gold Tuesday 27 April 2010 |
I thought that Airport security procedures had a role in helping to maintain some semblance of UK border control.
When I visit the USA, I have to provide advanced passenger information to enable US Homeland Security to check me out before I travel. I had assumed that this was also the case here with our own UK Border Agency and its recently acquired £1.2bn e-Borders computer system. I now learn that the EU Commission thinks otherwise.
Our UK Border Agency (UKBA) has been instructed that all EU citizens and their family members must be allowed entry into the UK even if they have not provided the required advanced passenger information. Airlines are being told that they must not deny boarding to anybody who does not provide the information or does not have one of the new machine readable passports or identity documents.
Any explanation from the UKBA would be welcome.
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| I think the "Why do we bother?" is about right. If we are not going to enforce these procedures, why did we spend £1 billion on a computer system. You can build three hospitals for that money. | |
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Chris Fisher, Norwich, UK 27 April 2010, 08:28AM | |
| Why do we have to be controlled by the EU in everything? I was told this was a trading free-market deal not control by some foreign power. We should control our own borders. | |
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| As an American citizen I am used to strict border control. Our Homeland Security guys do a great job in keeping our borders safe. No one gets into the USA without clearance. It does not matter whether you are a Brit or a US citizen - we check everybody.You Brits have a special relationship and get to use our Visa Waiver option on the assumption that you are safe. But, if you cannot keep your own house in order, we do not really want you coming into ours. | |
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| I want the borders kept safe not just from terrorists but from people that we do not need here. That means a lot of our EU membership that seemingly have rights but make no contribution to the country.I have no personal grumble about Poles etc that seem to want to work but we have to get our own people back to working properly. We cannot pay other people to do work whilst we have unemployed sitting around claiming benefit.Lets put the controls in place so that we know exactly who is in the UK. | |
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Amy King, Norwich, UK 27 April 2010, 10:15AM | |
| I do not see how we can have a Border Agency if we do not have secure borders. We cannot just allow people to come in willy nilly and go to hospitals or send their kids to school here. Who is paying? It is time to get real and recognise that there we do not have the money nor do we owe the world a living. | |
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John Kelly, Liverpool, UK 29 April 2010, 08:37AM | |
| Why is our Government so stupid. Why do we have to do what the EU says? Let us keep the borders safe and keep out those that do not have a place here. | |
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Kurt Kozlowski, London, England 29 April 2010, 08:45AM | |
| I am a EU Citizen and have absolute right to be in Britain as I do any of the countries in the EU. The old border mentality has finished, we now all share the same Europe. I bring my family and we stay here for a while and when it is not so good we go some where else. That is want the EU means - freedom for movement. Border control is out of date and EU now say it is illegal. | |
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| Why do we in the UK always roll over and die at the behest of the EU, hasn't this country been dumped on enough or won't they be happy until all the immigrants live here | |
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Catherine Wise, Oxford 6 May 2010, 07:20AM | |
| Turkeyhols speaks for many of us in respect of the EU and Britain's membership. The problem is that we (the Parliament that we elect) said that we wanted to be part of the Union. Once you decide to join something then you do have to be bound by its rules. Given my choice, I would extract ourselves tomorrow, but, until we do that, I fear that we are stuck with itThe immigration debate is probably another (different) issue, but yes, we have been dumped on, and more likely than not, by those that we elected and paid to manage things for us. | |
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Brian, London 7 May 2010, 12:43PM | |
| £1.2bn? What a huge waste of money spent on a flawed system. | |
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jan, glasgow 2 June 2010, 11:00AM | |
| If the european union says WE can't use this system, then why do I have to give advance passenger notification every time I fly to Spain. I don't know if other european countries ask for it, but Spain certainly does. Or is it the same old, tired story. Brussels makes the rules. Britain abides by them. Everyone else ignores them. I, for one am sick of it. | |
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Simon Evans, Devizes 18 June 2010, 09:39PM | |
| I was very amused to read that no one gets into the USA without clearance. How did the 12 million illegal immigrants living and working there manage it?We are paid up members of the EU, and have agreed to abide by its rules about freedom of movement. Those rules say we can go freely to any part of the EU, without having to tell anyone our plans or give them advance notice of our passport number etc. The e-Borders programme pretends this is not so, but if you read the details on UKBA's website, for travel between the UK and Europe you will find that they cannot compel you to provide information in advance, even though they would like you to think they can. You may not agree with this, but as a country that is what we have signed up to. There is no real point to e-Borders, because it only applies in practice to travel outside the EU, and most travel out of the UK is to another EU country. Crossing EU borders should be no more difficult than going from Kansas to Missouri. We are part of Europe now, whether you like it or not. If you don't appreciate all the Poles coming to England then move to Poland, you have as much right to live there as the Poles do (or Spain, or France, or Italy ... you get the picture?) | |
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