'Border Control' post Schengen

[Boac]

Picking up the Berlin truck disaster, can I ask the learned and wise of this place how they envisage Border Control working in Europe? Would we see miles of tail-backs at every crossing point as trains,vehicles and occupants are checked?

According the internet, there is a train which leaves Berlin at 0432 and would deposit said terrorist in Milan (via Frankfurt) at approximately 1640. Where do our experts think the identity/passport checks that would trap him would take place?

I cannot remember much cross-continent travel pre-EU, except riding my motor-bike from Calais into south-west Holland in 1964 and I'm pretty sure I was not checked at the border. How WAS it done?

[500N]

Pre checks via computer on purchase of ticket

Check before boarding, it is far easier on everyone than at the end but you control the environment.

Alot of documents are electronic now and can just be scanned even from a car and pulled over if it flags.

[Capetonian]

Border controls are not a solution, but they help towards a safer environment for everybody. The tragedy is that because external borders of the Schengen zone have not been maintained, most of the murdering scum are already inside the area, or where born in it, and have free movement within in it. That is wrong.

Restricting that movement by reintroducing border checks, not just at major crossings, but randomly and smaller crossings too, and on trains, would help, as would giving police or special forces 'stop, search, detain and deport' powers.

Before anyone accuses me of wanting to introduce a police state environment, that's exactly what I am proposing, because in times when wholesale slaughters are taking place, that is what is needed to restore some modicum of control and sanity. I would rather live in a police state than risk being murdered when I go out.

I lived in a 'police state' for many years, and felt safer than I do now. Nobody wants it, but the alternatives are worse.

[Boac]

Pre checks via computer on purchase of ticket

Check before boarding, it is far easier on everyone than at the end but you control the environment.

Alot of documents are electronic now and can just be scanned even from a car and pulled over if it flags.

..and how are any of these going to stop the Berlin trucker? He is on the train out of Berlin and arriving at Frankfurt - what then? Everyone on the train to Milan checked? In Frankfurt?/at the Swiss border?/at the Italian border?

OR ... he is in a car with NO 'documents' to 'flag' ? What do you propose these 'documents' should be? We have Visa-free travel in Europe and into the UK as it is.

[ian16th]

In my time, we always had visa free access to western Europe.

In 1957-8 I travelled to and from France on an RAF F1250.

I didn't get a passport until we went to Karachi, including a fuelling stop at Khartoum.

[500N]

Pre checks via computer on purchase of ticket

Check before boarding, it is far easier on everyone than at the end but you control the environment.

Alot of documents are electronic now and can just be scanned even from a car and pulled over if it flags.

..and how are any of these going to stop the Berlin trucker? He is on the train out of Berlin and arriving at Frankfurt - what then? Everyone on the train to Milan checked? In Frankfurt?/at the Swiss border?/at the Italian border?

OR ... he is in a car with NO 'documents' to 'flag' ? What do you propose these 'documents' should be? We have Visa-free travel in Europe and into the UK as it is.

Everyone should have papers/passport. This whole "no papers" is crap.

[Boac]

Everyone should have papers/passport. This whole "no papers" is crap.

Indeed, but the question was how do you check them.

[Capetonian]

Here's the answer to the above:

Restricting that movement by reintroducing border checks, not just at major crossings, but randomly and smaller crossings too, and on trains, would help, as would giving police or special forces 'stop, search, detain and deport' powers.

Anyone without the necessary proof of nationality and residence right is thrown into prison and waterboarded or whatever it is the authorities do to extract confessions. Then they are deported. If they don't like the thought of that happening to them, they'll bugger off before they get caught.

The ultimate deterrent would be to set my mother in law on them.

I'm a bit of a liberal, some of my friends would go a lot further than that.

[More Aviation]

Everyone should have papers/passport. This whole "no papers" is crap.

Indeed, but the question was how do you check them.

Well clearly some of these folks (some might say simpletons) believe that you can feasibly build and patrol large walls around countries and discount the economic impact of draconian border controls on the freedom of traffic, commerce and the cost, both monetary and human, that goes with vainly trying to implement such blunt and ultimately futile methods.

Not even the East Germans or the Israelis could/can hermetically seal their borders with such stupid and primitive methods!

MA

[Boac]

Cape - I was thinking of testing your theory until I read your penultimate line and bottled out............

[More Aviation]

As for the efficacy of passports. Please don't make me laugh! I won't go any further lest I enlighten the innocent and incriminate the guilty.

MA

[Capetonian]

I have dealt with my share of fake and fraudulently obtained passports when working for airlines, but the technology for detection is getting better, as of course are the criminals, but you can't drop your guard just because you know that there is always a loophole.

[More Aviation]

I have dealt with my share of fake and fraudulently obtained passports when working for airlines, but the technology for detection is getting better, as of course are the criminals, but you can't drop your guard just because you know that there is always a loophole.

I agree and don't get me wrong I am not advocating no passports and the like, just that ultimately (and very simplistically) a border is safest when your nearest border neighbours are stable and people have no need to come flooding into your country vide. the US/Canada border. Ultimately it is wars, financial pressures and the like that drive people across borders en masse and it is ultimately better to remove or work to fix the underlying causes than rushing around trying to treat the symptoms.

MA

[Boac]

Wise words

[Capetonian]

Agree entirely, but it's too late for that now, which is why drastic measures and stringent controls are needed.

[Dirk]

I,m actually all for very strict border control, I see the inevitable slow down of transits as a good thing for the planet as a whole, it wouldn't take long before people thought sod that, im not gonna go to the costa del sol twice this year. the only thing it would really harm would be economic growth, something the human race seems obsessed with.
The plus sides far outweigh the perceived pluses, which in my eyes are not really pluses anyway.

[More Aviation]

What next Dirk, border posts on the Severn bridges?

MA

[BenThere]

I think the most effective policy would be to pre-screen travelers who can prove themselves to be no threat, give them a card, and let them travel freely, even bypassing the security apparatus. That would eliminate a lot of the airport security congestion, delay, and hassle, while facilitating the free travel experience we used to enjoy. Then we could devote our screening resources, at much less cost, to Muslims, who are doing the killing of innocent people.

[ian16th]

What next Dirk, border posts on the Severn bridges?

MA

Why?
Both ends are in England!

Harold Wilson saying Monmouth is Welsh, doesn't count in our house.

[ExSp33db1rd]

In 1957-8 I travelled to and from France on an RAF F1250.

Same era ... travelled from UK to Canada to the USA to Mexico and v.v. on a 1250. Half the time not even in uniform. Didn't even own a passport then.

But .... only 3 years ago, holding a then still valid USA Visa, I could only pass the Immigration desk in Los Angeles having been photographed and fingerprinted and rubber stamped and asked .... quote .. are you the Mr. XX XXXX who first entered the United States of America on Dec. 14th 1959 as crew member of Bristol Britannia G-AOVO operating BOAC service No.BA 559 from London England ? He had EVERY entry and departure that I had ever made over the previous 50 years at his mouse control and knew everything about me, meanwhile .... the rest of the passengers were being waved through on a Visa Waiver programme ! I now enter on a Visa Waiver programme too, stuff the Visa application nonsense.

But ... In California last year I had to mail some documents home having had my signature verified. I found a Notary Public who refused to verify my signature - which was all he had to do - because I couldn't produce my passport showing that I was legally in the USA. I wonder what he asked the Mexicans who required his service ?

If I ever decide to reside in the States with Mrs ExS. I won't bother with expensive Citizenship procedures, I'll just fly to Tijuana and walk across the Border ! ( subject to Trump, of course ! )