Good fences make good neighbours: why border control is everybody's business and how APEC's Regional Movement Alert System can help

Think about the last time you took an international flight: did a twitchy passenger beside you order a stiff drink to wash down their pretzels? A recent study that traced 3 million passports of travellers entering the United States, Australia and New Zealand back to the place of issue explains why they may have needed that Dutch courage - remarkably, one in every 7,200 of the passports was found to be lost, stolen or otherwise invalid. Practically speaking, this means that for every 15 international flights you take on an A380, chances are that a passenger on one of those airplanes was travelling illegally.

Until recently, it didn't take James Bond-level subterfuge to travel unnoticed on a lost or stolen passport. Airports, say some experts, had operated on a need-to-know basis and therefore relatively independently of one another. So as long as one could avoid travelling to or through the place where the passport was originally issued, the scams would very easily go undetected.

But according to a spokesperson for the Border Security pision of the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC), this is no longer the case: "Preventing the movement of trans-national criminals, terrorists, people smugglers and people traffickers is an issue that cannot be addressed by a single government and with a single strategy. Advances in modern technology have enabled governments to be better placed to identify and monitor the movement of people of concern."

Crimes can also be hidden in travellers' wallets and cross-border flows of funds resulting from activities such as money laundering are estimated to reach between $2.17 and $3.61 trillion every year¹. This is money that might otherwise be used for healthcare, education, employment incentives and business stimulus - or to offset the tax burden of the majority of citizens who do abide by the law.

In response, APEC members are implementing a Regional Movement Alert System (RMAS) which allows real-time validation of passport data between participating economies². Simply put, RMAS transmits passport details from airline check-in counters or border posts to the economy of passport origin. If that passport has been reported lost, stolen or otherwise invalid, an alert notification is sent back. Further clarification with established 24 hour/7 days a week economy-based Operational Support Centres is then sought.

RMAS enables participating APEC economies to improve border management and passenger facilitation without needing to pool data in a central database or provide direct connections to each others' databases. The information is exchanged in real-time so that documents of concern are detected quickly without causing delay to other passengers. Authorities are then able to manage the situation outside of the queues and without disruption.

Says the DIAC spokesperson, RMAS is not intended to replace other systems but to act in concert with them: "Most countries employ a layered approach to border management and RMAS is flexible enough that it can be employed at any number of points within an APEC member economy's border system architecture."

Pioneered by Australia and supported by the United States and New Zealand, an operational framework has been adopted by all APEC member economies, each of whom can join as they become able.