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Who is responsible for...

Published: 26/11/2007 - Filed under: Archive » 2007 » December 2007 / January 2008 » Special Reports » Features » Special Reports »

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Who is responsible for… immigration queues?

At UK airports, the Home Office, specifically its Border and Immigration Agency.

I’ve never heard of it.

It’s a relatively new name. It was created in July 2006 as an executive agency of the Home Office and assumed the responsibilities of the old Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) for managing immigration control. Its mission is “to protect the public and secure our future” by managing immigration “in the interests of Britain’s security, economic growth and social stability”.

Why are the queues so long?

We’ll get to that in a minute. As of November 2007, the Home Office announced that, along with Customs and UK Visas, the Borders and Immigration Agency would fall under a new agency – the UK Border Agency. This new agency will have a central role in helping tackle crime and terrorism. It will complement the Borders and Immigration Agency’s e-borders solution, which includes schemes such as IRIS and Operation Semaphore.
 
Operation Semaphore?

We don’t have time. The delays we all suffered in 2007 were as a result of new technology. Before, officials simply swiped passports through a scanner which read a series of encoded letters and numbers. Then new equipment designed to read the new security holograms and computer-embedded data in biometric passports was introduced. This lengthened the process, since older documents were still swiped, but additional information needed to be entered into the official’s computer to further verify the identity of the passenger. This added a few seconds to the process, and those seconds added up very quickly when hundreds of passengers arrived at the same time (as they tend to do when a plane lands).

So whose fault was it?

Take your pick: the Home Office, the Borders and Immigration Agency, terrorists.
 
So will things get better?

Supposedly. When IRIS is working it can get you through in seconds and the Agency has recruited more immigration officers. In addition, the UK government has announced a £1.2 billion programme to strengthen the UK’s offshore border controls with new technology including a £650 million contract with consortia Trusted Borders for a passenger-screening system, which will work alongside the global roll-out of fingerprint visas to keep the UK’s border secure.

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