1. Trends and Border Control Initiatives Occurrences at our borders

2. 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.

3. 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)

4. Attractions Visa free Geographic location Easy routes to most European destinations Srilanka as the closest, three to four flights a day.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Major Conerns Marriage of convenience. Increasing number of trafficked victims for employment under false promises.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. MALDIVIAN E PASSPORT

11. Our New passport

12. New Maldivian Passport

13. 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

14. 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.

15. Thank you.