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Trends and Border Control Initiatives. Occurrences at our borders . Trends and Border Control Initiatives. Maldives has a population of 300,000 Three hundreds thousand. Expatriate foreign workers 80,000 Over 20,000 illegal expatriate foreign workers
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Trends and Border Control Initiatives Occurrences at our borders
Trends and Border Control Initiatives • Maldives has a population of 300,000 Three hundreds thousand. • Expatriate foreign workers 80,000 • Over 20,000 illegal expatriate foreign workers • No visa required , on arrival 30 day visa for all nationals.
Illegal movements • Abuse of Schengen visa’s • Counterfeit , stolen or altered passports & visa’s • Imposters • Boarding cards swaps • Improperly obtained documents. • Underage minors with work permits . ( new) • Trafficking ( new) • Money laundering ( new)
Attractions • Visa free • Geographic location • Easy routes to most European destinations • Srilanka as the closest , three to four flights a day.
Practices • All INAD are repatriated to home country due to lack of facilities to further investigate. • Under immigration act , a persons entry can be denied at the point of entry . • Majority are Srilankan Tamils, Chinese, Iranians, Iraqi,s and Africans.
Challenges • Returning of deportees using another document with names. • Lack of human smuggling and trafficking laws • Create awareness of human trafficking and smuggling issues to Immigration officers, police and judicial services. • No detention facilities • Lack of trained personalities these areas.
Major Conerns • Marriage of convenience. • Increasing number of trafficked victims for employment under false promises.
Major concerns • Drifting of boats with people of unknown origin . Possibly pirates. ( undocumented) • A new trend was noted lately, • People from this region and far east had been intercepted using Maldives :- • Maldives/Dubai/Doha/Casablanca/Lima Elsalvador:- from there ??? Question raised.
Initiatives • Passed our first Immigration act on 2007 • Started to issue E passports on 2007 . • A New visa issued to all expatriates from 01 Jan 2010. with enhanced security . • Working on to build a new border control system in 2010 with enhanced features like facial recognition, finger printing and retina scanning. • National data base to share electronic data is being established. With concerned gov parties.
Initiatives • An Immigration Intelligence unit was set up to gather and share information • A steering Committee on trafficking among stakeholders are formed. • A New act of Money laundering has being drafted. • A Terrorism draft finalized ( yet to be passed) • A good working relationship is maintained with ALO in Colombo
Initiatives • For all human trafficking issues immigration has been assigned as the focal point. • With the assistance of Australian Government a model law on human trafficking and smuggling in progress.