Face scans planned for NZ airports

By COLIN ESPINER

New Zealanders flying home from overseas will be required to have their face digitally scanned at airports under proposed legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Immigration Minister David Cunliffe tabled a 350-page Immigration Bill in Parliament yesterday, describing it as the biggest rewrite of immigration law for two decades.

The bill all but guts the 1987 Immigration Act, slicing the appeals system for would-be refugees and other migrants seeking residency in New Zealand from four tiers to just one.

It provides tough new powers for Immigration New Zealand to imprison for up to six months those who refuse to sign deportation orders, to use classified information held by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) in assessing applications for entry, and to collect biometric data on all visitors to New Zealand.

New Zealand citizens will be exempt from the requirement to provide biometric data such as fingerprinting and iris scans but will have to submit to a digital scan of their face, which will be compared by computer with an image stored on a microchip in their passport.

Cunliffe said pictures of New Zealanders who were verified would then be deleted.

Only where there was a discrepancy or fraud was suspected would the picture be stored.

Late last year, Cunliffe pledged not to subject Kiwis to iris scans at airports, but he did not mention a digital photograph.

He said yesterday the changes were necessary to strengthen border security and tighten the law against “those who pose a risk to New Zealand’s wellbeing”.

Council of Civil Liberties chairman Michael Bott called the proposed legislation “a disgrace” and said it ushered in “Stalinist” powers for the state, and the Minister of Immigration in particular, to decide who could reside in New Zealand.

The process used to detain one of New Zealand’s best-known refugees, Ahmed Zaoui, is being thrown out under the changes.

The controversial Security Risk Certificate, slapped on Zaoui by the SIS, is being repealed.

The bill strengthens deportation provisions, allowing non-residents to be deported for a wide range of breaches of the law, from identity fraud and breaching visa conditions to previous criminal convictions and being deemed “a risk to national security”.

The bill’s passage through Parliament seems assured, with National yesterday welcoming the legislation.

Immigration spokesman Lockwood Smith said it reflected the changing needs of the 21st century.

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