New visa system in the offing:

Passport office revamped

by Manjula FERNANDO

Immigration and Emigration Controller General Chulananda Perera says his Department is engaged in a major revamping process, with new amendments to the existing Immigration and Emigration Act to keep it in tune with the demands of a post conflict nation.

The Controller General says the Act will introduce severe punishments to those who commit offences such as aiding and abetting illegal immigrants, document forgery and impersonations while it will provide necessary legal backing for bio-metric capturing for future passport issuance.

He added, "The Electronic Visa Authority Scheme which met with a lot of resistance at the outset has now found its own course. ETA scheme has earned the State Rs. 600 million from January 1 to March 28."

Here are excerpts from the interview:

The Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) scheme is being implemented very smoothly now. All the stakeholders involved with the ETA are happy with its progress so far. We had a very negative response in the initial stages with some countries expressing reservations about it.

There were numerous protests. But now it is a different story altogether. The revenue collected by the new visa scheme so far, from January to March 28 exceeded Rs. 600 million (US $ 4.8 m).

The processing of issuing Electronic Visas at the beginning was not very smooth as visitors wanted to apply for visa after landing in Colombo, but now almost all of them have got used to it.

They apply for visas well ahead of their trip. Hence, the hassle of issuing on-arrival visas, too, has eased.

From January 1 to March 28, a total of 335,073 tourists and other visitors have arrived in Sri Lanka, under the new visa scheme. Of them the majority 19 p.c. were from India, the next 12 p.c. were from UK and then another 8 p.c. from Germany, followed by France and the Russian Federation.

This is one of the biggest changes and biggest innovations the immigration and Emigration Department has effected so far. We are happy and proud of its progress.

Vavuniya office

After the end of the conflict there was a need to decentralise our services to the North for the benefit of the people in the North and the East. We opened a regional office in Vavuniya recently. It was opened in a building that was allocated to us by the Government Agent. This is the only property the Department owns at the moment.

Border control

Border control is one of the key functions of the Immigration Department. We are yet to go into this area, and take effective measures in border control. The inland monitoring system has been neglected during the past years due to the situation in the country. This is one of our priority issues now.

We have set up a documentation laboratory, with financial assistance of the Australian Government. This lab helps us trace all the forged passports and forged visas. At the Airport, we have come across instances where passengers who do not get cleared from immigration somehow board the airline.

This has compelled us to run last minute checks on passengers to see if they have been cleared by the Immigration desk.

This border surveillance unit will deploy mobile immigration officers shortly at the boarding gates to cross-check their passports. They will be equipped with hand held devices to scan passports.

Sometimes, people who have been blacklisted and whose passports have been impounded due to ongoing court cases have fled the country this way. The new procedure will help put a stop to this.

The officers of the border surveillance unit will carry out random checks in the airport.

Biometrics

This will be the biggest ever project the Department has undertaken. Everything that is needed to implement biometric capturing for the issuance of passports is being finalised and I am confident that we can begin the process within the course of this year.

Sri Lanka has a very good system of processing applications and issuing passports but it is based on two documents, the birth certificate and the identity card. If someone forged the national ID or birth certificate, there is a possibility of getting his or her passport on such forged information. The only solution to overcome this is capturing biometrics which will help freeze his/her identity. This way no one can obtain different passports in different guises.

This will be the first step towards introducing a foolproof 'biometric' passport where the passport will have biometric features embedded. This will take another 2-3 years time.

At the moment we have blank passports. It takes time to gradually do away with them and the costs involving a biometric passport too will be a bit high. We need to evaluate all the pros and cons before going for full implementation.

Even the 'N passport' that we issue at the moment is considered one of the best fool proof documents. It has a lot of security features that are recognised by countries, especially the Scandinavian states.

Dual citizenship

We have formulated a system with new criteria for the issuance of dual citizenship. This proposal with a number of procedures that could be adopted, is now with the Defence Ministry.

The Ministry will submit the report for Cabinet approval after selecting the most suitable procedure. If we get the green light to what we have proposed, it will be an easy and simple process to follow.

The President has been briefed of the proposed new procedure.

New Visa system

We are also in the process of revamping the existing visa system. Basically we have two visa categories, Visit/Tourist Visa and Resident visa.

Under Resident Visa, there are certain categories such as spouse visa, working visa, etc.

Under the resident visa category, there is a 'Resident Guest Scheme' and we plan to introduce a new one called 'Sri Lanka My Dream Home' category.

This new category will be for senior citizens from the West who like to come and spend their retirement in Sri Lanka.

There is a significant number of people who like to spend their retirement in Sri Lanka with our meditation practices, Ayurvedic treatment and the mild weather. Within this year we would like to offer these two visa categories. This is something Thailand and Malaysia offer their visitors already.

We have to compete with them. The existing regulations require prospective visitors under this category to show a certain amount of finances in their bank accounts and remittances of US $ 1500. There will be some changes to these requirements in the coming days to make it more visitor friendly.

Interpol

When a lost and stolen passport is reported to the Immigration office, the procedure we follow now is to put a log entry at the police station and then a new passport is issued to the victim.

For the moment we have no way of tracing these passports or stop anyone from using it for illegal purposes overseas. We can only block the passport from being used locally.

But from end of April we will be linking up with the Interpol to enable us to trace our lost and stolen passports and block their use anywhere in the world.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) gave us assistance in this regard. This helps us keep track of the world's most wanted criminals including Sri Lankans who have fled to other countries.

We are the first in entire South Asia to link up with Interpol to share such information on travel documents.

Immigration and Emigration Act

We are also in the process of amending the Immigration and Emigration Act. There are so many changes to be brought in to make it in tune with today's requirements. For instance we need to introduce harsh penalties against those who facilitate illegal immigrants.

Laws governing document forgery and offences involving dual citizenship to be proposed need to be reviewed too.The Act must also change to facilitate bio-metric capturing for issuing passports or people could simply object to such procedures if it is not supported by law.

The proposed amendments are now with the Legal Draftsman and this is expected to be presented in Parliament shortly.

Centre for illegal immigrants

With peace returning to the country and with the accelerated development, we believe Sri Lanka no longer will be a source country of illegal immigrants but instead a recipient country. Therefore we will need a place to shelter people who enter the country illegally until their repatriation or processing of visa.

We have acquired a land in Minuwangoda for this purpose. It will not be called a detention centre but an 'Accepting Centre'.

Currently there is a small detention centre in Mirihana. That is a centre belonging to the Police department. This new centre in Minuwangoda will have better facilities and more space. We have already finished the land acquisition.

Data Analysing unit

Data pertaining to immigration and emigration is of vital importance to university students, research officers and other institutions in the public and private sector. The Department with this in mind is making arrangements to set up a new statistical unit to process all the data available with us.

Latest statistical applications and tools will be used to analyse and process the data by the staff here. Statistics on passport issuance, the arrivals and departures at the airport, the background of people - age, sex, ethnicity, religion, - all this will be recorded and processed by this unit.