Position Paper – Future-proofing your border control

Today, border security procedures are performed on all travelers, at departure or upon arrival. This means unnecessary time spent on lawful travelers and more bottlenecks at borders. Border guards need to be able to assess the threat of an individual prior to arrival, allowing them to spend time on those who present a risk, and streamlining border-cross checks for nationals and bona fide travelers.

An additional level of complexity is added by the fact that the usable infrastructure can vary greatly between two border crossing points. From the big international airport in a country’s capital to the small land border crossing point, all layouts must be taken into account.

In light of these challenges, governments and agencies in charge of immigration should rethink the border control process entirely. Various key questions arise and shape the evolution of new border control processes:

• How to improve security and streamline processes at the same time?
• How to support the decision-making process to alleviate the border guards’ workload?
• What technologies and tools are available that can help prevent the border crossing of unwanted individuals and enable a welcoming arrival process for everyone else?

The latest technological improvements allow governments to answer these questions by designing their border control systems in line with the following objectives:

• Assessing passengers’ risk profiles prior to arrival
• Making checks at physical borders fast, secure and convenient for nationals and bona fide travelers
• Confirming that a known identity (i.e. of someone who has already visited the country) matches with the physical person at the border
• Providing border guards with all the necessary insight for them to make the most informed decision In this position paper we explain you: How to enable the border control process of the future How to protect travelers’ biometrics and biographical data privacy How we can support you to implement our Augmented Borders vision to re-invent border management