Note from the author: Normally the following would be one of my German language articles belonging to the “Datenschutz” (privacy) series, however it gives a contrary view for those people who argue the vast, ill-founded collection of all travellers’ personal information, including biometrics, makes a country safer – and presents NZ as good example how to do it differently and achieve the same, if not even better results.

While living in a foreign country long term, it always pays to keep up to date with immigration legislation and practices. This may be easy or rather difficult, depending on how developed a country’s immigration department, their systems and their resources are. I’m in luck, since Immigration New Zealand (INZ) maintains an excellent website with a dedicated news section, so every expat/migrant can immediately check what’s going on.

Along this, they also publish media reports related to immigration matters – and this where I stumbled upon “Year at the Border”, an apparently annually published paper talking about immigration statistics and the work of INZ throughout the year. I did take some time to read most of it and as it turns out, it contains very interesting information about how the country handles incoming passengers.

Read on if you want to find out how NZ manages to keep their borders safe without – this is the point I want to make – the security theatre that one has to endure in the US, Canada, Australia, other developed nations and, unfortunately in the near future, Europe. Continue reading →