Passport Fraud and Its Impact on Marine Ports in the United Arab Emirates - Literature review Example

Passport Fraud and Its Impact on Marine Ports in the United Arabs Emirates Name Institution Date Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Facts about passport fraud 3 Types of passport fraud 5 Impacts of passport fraud on United Arab Emirates marine ports 6 Solutions and recommendations to prevent passport fraud 9 Passport verification 9 Employment of passports specialists in UAE marine ports 10 Issuance of electronic passports 11 Introduction A passport is a document issued by a government to permit its citizens to travel abroad, and appeal to other foreign governments to facilitate their passage and offer protection, on a reciprocal basis. The UAE passport recognizes the bearer as a UAE citizen or a foreign national. It is a request to the foreign governments to allow temporary residence or travel within their territories and access to every lawful local protection and assistance. It also permits the bearer to access UAE consular services and aid while overseas and re-entry into UAE (Rice & Todd, 2005) Passports fraud is the deliberate deception during the passport application process made for personal gain which causes another individual to suffer damages. According to Stana (2005), passport fraud occurs when a person gives or makes wrong statements during passport application, or presents misleading or false documents in passport application. Passport fraud also occurs when a person improperly uses the passport, or fails to report a stolen or lost passport. Passport fraud might also include things like forging a signature of a witness, guarantor or another individual who has parental liability for a minor, using fake birth or identity documents or those not belonging to the person applying for the passport or selling or giving a person’s identity documents (Fragomen, 2007). Facts about passport fraud According Fragomen (2007), passport fraud is a serious crime that is regarded as a national criminal act. Fraudulently attained passports help criminals to conceal their activities and movements and are usually intended to facilitate other crimes. These crimes may be anything ranging from organized crime, murder, international terrorism, narcotics trafficking, money laundering or alien smuggling. Most people who commit passport fraud are trying to conceal their true identities so that their activities and movements are not able to be connected with them. Since passport fraud is usually associated with other serious crimes, it makes that most individuals committing this action are guilty of other unlawful activities (Hoffman, & McGinley, 2010). Individuals engaged in passport fraud may be those attempting to illegally attain legal status of citizenship, and individuals guilty of financial deceit and other serious crimes. There are numerous diverse ways of committing passport fraud. It may be as easy as substituting photos, obtaining around two parent signature rules for the minors, utilizing the passport of a deceased person and assuming her or his identity or altering legal documents (Dunstone, 2009). Criminals and terrorists use several schemes to get fraudulent identification Stolen blank or insider derived novel documents like birth certificates are used as a means of creating fictitious identity or to legitimize an individual’s status in the United Arab Emirates. Identification cards and documents can be easily developed using off the shelf computer software and printed on the high resolution printers, techniques that make visual detection much difficult for border security and law enforcement officers (Turack, 2006). According to Great Britain House of Commons (2007), passport fraud is common because several governments do not take fraud prevention attempts. In several nations, host governments condone, ignore, or actively take part in passport fraud. Numerous of these nations dynamically export their citizens who are unemployed, and the resulting remittances are usually large and vital part of the economy of these countries. In other nations, government officers personally take part in passport fraud and highly profit from it and local authorities usually do not have much incentive of prosecuting passport fraud or lack resources needed to do so while in other nations, fraud connected to passport and foreign visa application is not a felony. Types of passport fraud There are numerous forms of passport fraud. The first is the deliberate issuing of a legitimate passport in a fake identity by the government. Authentic passports are usually issued in fake identities to offer cover for intelligence officials, but this might also be undertaken for other reasons. For instance, a government might provide its intelligence officers with the national passports in fake identities so these intelligent officers might travel to other countries to execute terrorist attacks. This was the case in the late 1990s, during the Operation Desert Shield, where Iraqi government offered a huge group of intelligence officials with Iraqi passports in fake identities so that the officials could travel to foreign countries and execute terrorist invasions against the United States interests. Another form of passport fraud involving authentic passports is whereby the government isn’t knowingly engaged in the issuance of a passport for the deceptive identity. In such incidents, the passport applicant utilizes fraudulent identification documents when applying for the passport. The set of documents requires getting a passport, are usually called breeder documents and include a birth certificate, a driver’s license and a social security card. A collection of fraudulent breeder documents may be counterfeit, genuine but altered which may be done by modifying the name or the date or birth or genuine documents attained by fraud. In this case, a person applies for the replacement of a birth certificate of a dead infant to get a driver’s license or social security card (Biegelman, 2009). The individual applying for replacement of the birth certificate usually alleges that her or his original birth certificate was stolen or lost. Birth certificates are the major source of real identification and are needed to obtain a passport. Birth certificates nevertheless do not need fingerprints or photographs and are thus are easy to duplicate, forge or create. The multitude of the passport issuing authorities and the lack of uniformity make it hard to discover fraudulent birth certificates. Baptismal, marriages and residency certificates are also easy to get fraudulently why are then used to obtain a passport (Consumer Protection Division, 2009). Dunstone (2009) notes that another group of genuine passports utilized in passport fraud are those that are genuine but have been changed, often through reinstating a photo appearing on a passport and this is known as a photo-subbed passport. Finally, there are counterfeit passports, which are developed from scratch by a document vendor. Like forged currency, there is a huge range of quality in regard to counterfeit passports. Also, like currency, numerous passports counterfeiters even try to utilize elements of authentic passports, such as the optically dead paper having little or no fluorescent utilized for the pages and holographic laminates used on photo pages. Impacts of passport fraud on United Arab Emirates marine ports There are several negative impacts of passport fraud. Passport fraud has resulted to illegal immigration to UAE nations. Several individuals have forged passports in order to meet immigration requirements to enter in UAE. Passport fraud helps these criminals to remain on United Arab Emirates ports and marines and escape law enforcement and assist them to commit more crimes. Illegal aliens also utilize fake passports to obtain employment in the UAE’s ports and marines. Passport fraud has also been used in terrorist attacks in UAE ports and marines. Several Iraq citizens are being held in prison with accusations of passport fraud after being duped deceitful in their homeland (Schloenhardt, 2003). These individuals have forged the passports in order to be able to access and enter Abu Dhabi Terminals which play a significant role in economic development of United Arab Emirates. The Abu Dhabi Terminals permits the UAE nations to connect internationally via its sea network and well equipped seaports. These Iraq individuals forged the passports because they were attempting to wait for two years for issuance of a new passport. They were all holding what they deemed to be authentic G- series Iraq passports, which were introduced in 2007 to reinstate the Saddam- period S-series passport. Nevertheless, until their replacement with the new biometric A- series passport, the G- series passports were in insufficient supply at Iraqi embassy in Abu Dhabi, with delay s of approximately two years. In order to speed up the procedure, Iraqs who required new passports usually sent their old passports to travel agencies in order for new ones to be processed. But other than applying for new passports on behalf of Iraq citizens, numerous travel agencies took the used passports and merely pasted in the resident identity pages of the United Arab Emirates. Use of fake passports has resulted to terrorist attacks such as the assassination of Mahmud- al- Mabhuh, a founder of Hamas movement military wing in Dubai. The passports utilized by perpetrators of this offense were cloned by Mossad intelligence service of Israel. Passport fraud has result to nationality sagas because United Arab Emirates does not identify dual nationality. Kids of UAE fathers automatically attain UAE citizenship at birth and are supposed to enter UAE upon possession of UAE passports. This has resulted to people using fraudulent means in order to acquire UAE passports. And the United Arab Emirates have confiscated United States passports of U.S/ UAE dual nationals in the past years. According to Fragomen (2007), passport frauds have also resulted to illegal immigration to UAE marine ports in search of employment resulting to illegal employment. Even though it is customary for local sponsors to hold the passport of employees, this is illegal under the UAE law. Several labor/ contractual disputes have emerged but this has been solved through the establishment of the all conditions and terms of sponsorship or employment in labor contract at the start of every employment. United States citizens have at several instances engaged on commercial disputes that have prompted the UAE local courts and firms to take custody of the fraudulent passports United States citizens in order to effectively prevent the involved persons from leaving UAE until the dispute is solved. Additional, local firms have leveraged the United Arab Emirates criminal justice scheme in an effort to strengthen and coerce their negotiation stance in times of commercial disputes through filling criminal protests which result to travel restriction as well as criminal penalties, entailing jail term. Solutions and recommendations to prevent passport fraud Passport verification Since passport fraud result to a lot of insecurities, security should be a growing issue in global travel for both UAE governments and travelers. UAE countries should initiate passport verification to assist improve the security attempts for overseas travel. It is a significant matter with the latent for terrorists and criminals to travel amid nations with forged or fake documentation. The more efforts the UAE countries put into validating the identity of overseas nationals, the better the opportunity of keeping terrorists and criminals from entering into the countries and causing problems. Passport is particularly significant in marine ports and other points of entry into a nation. Following recent terrorists attacks such as the September 11 coordinated suicide attacks by the al Qaeda on the United states , marine ports are required to take extra care when determining whether individuals entering the ports are precisely who they saw they are. Passport verification is a significant safety measure that nations should take to assure the safety of the travelers. With better technology, passport verification will become more reliable and efficient More safeguards should be enacted across all United Arab Emirates ports to best dealt with issues of identity theft and forgery by terrorist organizations and criminals. Verifying the authenticity of a passport by eye is not an easy task and compounded by the reality that new forgery methods are continuously being developed to overcome counter forgery schemed that are employed during the legitimate process of passport production( Ogier, & Liu, 2008). The secretes usually lie within characteristics like watermarks, unique security threads inserted during paper production procedure, threads covered with ink that react to ultraviolet light, micro line printing diminutive plastic disks entrenched in paper, background printing and holograms reflective coatings. Appraisal of passports utilizing these features implies remaining abreast of the production techniques for both fake and real passports in all authorities concerned or adoption of a global passport verification standard, using the machine readable passport zones format. Passports with entrenched microchips possessing an individual’s personal information and digitized photos, special passports designs and e-passports must be implemented so as to improve the safety for tourist and citizens (Schloenhardt, 2003). Replacement of hand written passports with machine readable passports Passport fraud in the United Arab Emirates is being caused by hand written passports and therefore this problem can be solved by replacing hand written passports with new biometric machine readable passports. Therefore United Arab Emirates should restrict travel for people holding had written passports and make biometric passports as the best choice since this form of passport is regarded more secure. The UAE government should no longer accept manual passports and should also not issue visas to individuals holding manual passport (Miller, & Vandome 2009). Employment of passports specialists in UAE marine ports Passport specialists with knowledge in passport forgery should be posted to dedicated offices in all ports and marines across the United Arab Emirates and all border posts to crack down on this criminal activity. Majority of officials at airports and immigration should be well trained to spot counterfeited passports and offices with highly equipped devices in detecting forgery established. These specialists should make an executive decision on questioned passports and documents rather than waiting for them to undergo examinations through the forensics department at forensic criminology laboratories (Miller & Vandome, 2009). Issuance of electronic passports In order to prevent passport fraud, United Arab Emirates nations should issue its citizens with electronic passport which is a normal passport with addition of a minute contactless computer chip or integrated circuit entrenched in the back cover. This chip stores a similar data which is visually displayed on photo page of a passport, and in addition engages a digital photograph. According to Great Britain House of Commons, (2007), the insertion of a digital photograph will enhance biometric comparison, via the utilization of facial recognition technology, at global borders. The electronic passport biometric technology offers greater safety against identity theft at the issuance stage and usage stage of the passport. When an electronic passport is processed, the photograph offered by the applicant will be matched with the images from any UAE travel documents they have previously held. Consumer Protection Division (2009), states that the photograph of the applicant will also be matched against the images held in the UAE database to make sure that the individual hasn’t applied for the travel document using other names. In the future, global border control points such the United Arab Emirates marine ports must provide electronic passport processing and use the automated system checks to make comparisons of the photographs stored in the electronic passport against the live images of the person bearing the passport. This will ensure that the bearer is the individual to whom a passport is issued and the information on the chip hasn’t been interfered with (Dunstone, 2009) The introduction of electronic passport will be about safeguarding the confidentiality of the passport holders and strengthening the veracity of the process of passport issuance. A passport is a crucial tool in offering ones identity and through fighting and combating identity scam; the electronic passport will protect the personal information on the passport form misuse. Additionally, strict guidelines will control the way in which passport issuance departments utilizes the information a person will supply during passport application. Government officers are prohibited from using, collecting or disclosing personal information except in performance of their tasks and thus these departments have the obligation of taking all rational steps to protect personal information against misuse, loss disclosure, modification or unauthorized access (Schloenhardt, 2003). Use of face-to face passport interviews UAE countries should establish interview offices to interview people who will be applying for passports for the first time face to face in order to deter passport fraudsters. These interviews will stop fraudsters form hijacking the identities of other people to execute serious crimes. Interviews through a videolink will benefit people in the UAE ports and the entire UAE community from crimes committed by passport fraudsters whilst ensuring the UAE passport is a secure passport in the whole globe. Investigation of fraudulent passport holders Investigating and targeting criminals who develop and use fraudulent passports is the most efficient means through which terrorist mobility, drug trafficking and human smuggling can be disrupted. The UAE government should therefore offer detailed, continuing guidance to fraud investigation and passport fraud prevention managers at posts overseas, to enhance them to better carry out and prioritize their responsibilities. The staff should also be trained on how to detect fraudulent documents presented during the process of passport application in order to lead to a better balance between issuances and refusals (Consumer Protection Division, 2009). Utilization of passport lookout tracking system In order to prevent passport fraud, the UAE government should use passport lookout tracking system (PLOTS) which is a web enhanced image archive and case management scheme used in management and adjudication of consular lookout automated support system (CLASS) cases. The government should make sure that all passport posts, agencies and border inspection agencies utilize CLASS to perform name checks on passport applicants. PLOTS will collect and maintain every record connected with application for a UAE passport. The record subjects in the PLOTS will be applicants of UAE passports who are suspected of possessing crime warrants or of executing passport fraud, people who owe debts to the government or dependents. Passport lookout tracking system will collect and maintain the information that is directly applicable to lawful issuance of passports and protect the integrity of these passports as proof of UAE nationality at home and around the globe. PLOTS warns the passport agency officers that a passport applicant might, by regulation or statute, be not eligible to obtain the passport or that the passport must have restraints imposed upon it (Ogier &Liu, 2008). This will give passport specialists and fraud prevention managers the capability to view all the information to the case of the passport applicant, entailing information that originates from other consular affairs schemes. Stana, (2005) argues that passport lookout tracking system will passport specialists and fraud prevention managers from one passport agency to scrutinize probable fraud trials at other agencies. For instance, in an individual is indicated in a deceptive trial to get a passport in Dubai and she or he makes a consequent trial with the same identification or name in Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi staff will be able to scrutinize the digital images and documents of the preceding attempt in Dubai. Conclusion Passport fraud is a serious crime that negatively impacts the United Arab Emirates marine ports. Passport fraud is usually connected with other crimes and fraudulently acquired passports are intended to commit crimes and they enable criminals to obscure their actions and movements and commit crimes such as international terrorism, money laundering, murder and alien smuggling. Therefore the United Arab Emirates should come up will measures that will prevent passport fraud and ensure people do not use forged documents when applying for passports. Measures such as passport verification, replacement of hand written passports with machine readable passports, face to face passport interviews, use of passport lookout schemes and initiation and issuance of electronic passports will prevent passport fraud and protect the integrity of UAE passports. References Great Britain House of Commons. (2007). Identity and Passport Service: introduction of ePassports. England: Stationery Office. Consumer Protection Division. (2009). Take charge fighting against identity theft. Philadelphia: DIANE Publishing. Hoffman, S. & McGinley. (2010). Identity theft: a reference handbook. Santa Barbra: ABC- CLIO. Biegelman, M., (2009). Identity Theft Handbook: Detection, Prevention and Security. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Rice, S., & Todd, G., (2005). A Guide to becoming a travel professional. London: Cengage. Turack, D., (2006). The Passport in international law. California: Lexington Books. Schloenhardt, A., (2003).Migrant smuggling: illegal immigration and organized crime in Australia and Asia Pacific Region. Australia: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Dunstone, T. (2009). Biometric and data analysis: design, evaluation and data mining. Bangistoke: Springer. Fragomen, A. (2007). Immigration procedures handbook. New York: C. Boardman Ogier, J. & Liu, W. (2008).Graphics recognition: recent advances and new opportunities. New York: Springer. Miller, F, & Vandome A., (2009). Biometric passport. Kansas: VDM Publishing House Ltd. Stana, R., (2005). Combating Alien smuggling: opportunities exist to improve the federal response. New York: DIANE Publishing. Read More