{"id":132,"date":"2003-10-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opendna.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2003-10-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-10-01T12:00:00","slug":"just-another-passenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/2003\/10\/01\/just-another-passenger\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Another Passenger"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I was roving<\/a><\/p>\n

(etc<\/a>)
\nMonday. It was myself and another fellow who signed-up around the same
\ntime. For reasons not entirely clear to either of us he had only been
\nroving five times in a year and a half, so I was kinda the lead officer.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\nWe do some “random checks” on most of the flights – stop passengers and
\ncheck their documents and ask them a few questions. We don’t profile, but
\nif we did we’d be profiling against any one of a few hundred pieces of
\nintelligence. On a few flights we do “100% checks” and have everyone show
\nus their documents. This is partly to catch undocumented travelers at the
\ngated, partly to send a message to the smugglers, and partly because the
\nsupervisor of the day “has a feeling” about a given flight. <\/p>\n

\nA small handful of countries make up the bulk of our smuggling cases:
\nAlbania, China, Nigeria, Macedonia, Mongolia, Philippines, Sri Lanka. Some
\nairports and airlines (and therefore flights) have more problems than
\nothers. Because of the open design of the transit lounge in Tokyo, for
\nexample, we have a lot of undocumented travelers on flights from Narita.<\/p>\n

\nThe whole strategy of undocumented (“No-Doc”) travelers is rather weird,
\nand I still don’t really understand it. What usually happens is the
\nsmugglees will destroy the passport on the plane so that they arrive
\nwithout documents. I guess the idea is that we can’t send them back if
\nthey don’t have a passport, but they all ask for political asylum so we
\ncan’t send them back anyway. Some officers figure the smugglers just don’t
\nknow that part. In some cases the smugglers are on the plane with the
\nsmugglees, and they collect the passports so they can be recycled. This
\ntoo results in the arrival of undocumented travelers.<\/p>\n

\nAnyway, it’s getting near the end of totally uneventful day and we’re
\nwatching the passengers come off a low-risk flight:<\/p>\n

\nCollege kid. Business traveler. Business traveler. Family visitor.
\nBusiness traveler. Newly-weds. Carlos Santana. Business traveler. College
\nkid.<\/p>\n

\nCarlos Santana<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\nThere you go. That was the highlight of the day. No No-Docs. No
\nterrorists. No smugglers. No traffickers. No murderers or perverts. I
\nexchanged nods with Carlos Santana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I was roving (etc) Monday. It was myself and another fellow who signed-up around the same time. For reasons not entirely clear to either of us he had only been roving five times in a year and a half, so I was kinda the lead officer. We do some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-line","tag-immigration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}