The absurdity of border control questions

Something controversial to start the day: I do not find Dad's Army particularly funny.

But does that make me un-British? According to UK Border Control, it does:

From the Independent:

Mohamed Nur, 26, was stopped at Heathrow airport in June after returning from a holiday in Dubai. He was held for nine hours and forced to give DNA samples and fingerprints. During the questioning, one of the police officers asked about his British credentials. "He asked me 'Do you consider yourself to be English?' I said I consider myself to be British, rather than just English," Mr Nur said.

"He said 'How do you consider yourself to be British when you have no historical links with Britain? It's like me going to Somalia and living there and people still not considering me to be Somali because of the way I look.'

"I said 'I've lived most of my life in Britain so that's why I'm British'. Then he asked me about Dad's Army, and whether I watched it or not. I said 'Yes'. He said 'Do you find it funny?' and I said 'Yes'. Then he said 'I consider you British'."

I find myself torn by profiling at airports. On the one hand it makes sense to target those whose background makes them most likely to pose a threat, but equally, any sort of unsusbstantiated and obviously bias racial profiling is an unjustifiable intrusion on privacy and freedom.

I recommend reading the entire Independent article, it poses a number of very serious questions on liberty and how far border control is going to stop anyone from 'slipping through the net'.

By Dylan Sharpe

Comments

[Paul Dean]

We always get interrogated at airports, as one of our children has a different skin colour to the rest of us, to check we're not child traffickers. This is, of course, in front of her, doubtless regressing any psychological building we do to help her see that adoption means she is "as born to us". But, as I always say, if we were child traffickers we would get quite obviously get someone of the same skin colour to take the children across the border. Surely terrorists will just get people with low risk attributes. It's always the way with these things - the real criminals will find ways around the obstacles easily enough, while making the majority of innocent people actually go over them.

[usefulfor]

http://usfl.fr/no_answers

[usefulfor]

Sorry for the previous comment. This is like the story of the American guy that refused to answer custom questions:

http://usfl.fr/no_answers

[Andrew Ampers Taylor]

I am white, with a British name and English accent. I am, as with other white English speaking people, treated like a criminal at airports nowadays so refuse to fly anywhere.

It must be really tough for those with a darker skin.

Holidays for me are now either cruises or Eurostar trains to the continent.

[alastair]

@Ampers:
Likewise - I now dislike the "security procedures" so much that I would only fly somewhere if it was really important.

There's just no justification for the level of "security theatre" that we're put through at airports, and moreover it creates long "security" queues that result in a lot of people stood tightly packed together for a long time, a suicide bomber's wet dream.

[Purlieu]

I agree with Alastair, it always struck me that the zigzag queue for 'security' at Heathrow, where you have 2-300 people crammed into a small volume, no blast shields anywhere, would make a perfect target for a suicide bomber. They really haven't thought it out, have they.