PASSPORT SYSTEM

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 14 February 1930, Page 3

PASSPORT SYSTEM

CONSIDERED A FARCE Passports as a means of keeping criminals ■and other undesirable aliens out of England are proving a failure, and the authorities a : t Scotland Yard and the Home Office have recently received further proof of the futility of i the passport system, says the “’Daily Express” (London). An alien who was arrested in London passed through the barriers at Folkstone Harbour in England without a passport. This was possible because he was in possesion o'f the return sections of a week-end London to Paris ticket which had been posted to him by a friend in London. The holder of a. week-end ticket to France or Belgium does not, require a passport, and this fact has compelled the authorities to realise that, the passport system has now become a farce. Any criminal on the Continent, who wants to come to England need not bother about a passport; he just asks his friends in London to post him a week-end ticket to Paris, which' can he bought at pny tourist agency. 'With such a ticket he can smile his why through the barriers at the English Channel ports, unless he is known to the detectives on duty, and is want- . ed for a particular crime. '“There is no, doubt that week-end tickets without passports have made it possible for many undesirable people to enter England almost whenever i they please,” said an official at one of the Channel ports. “The old idea that the passport system is a means of keeping out undesirables is now proved to be .wrong. Even be'f'ore the time of week-end tickets without passports, undesirables were always sufficiently ingenious to jet through, usually with the aid of stolen or forged passports.” A “Daily Express” representative, who made two journeys to the Continent recently found that, travelling is an ordinary ticket-holder, his passport was closely examined bv the authirties at Dover, but when he arrived it Dover without a passport, but with i weekend ticket, the entry into Engand was much easier.