Cherelle Jackson interviews Matt Gibbs, Head of Secretariat of the Pacific Immigration Directors’ Conference (PIDC) at the August Conference in Apia.

Newsline: What is the current situation of immigration related crimes in the Pacific?

Matt Gibbs: In terms of a regional picture on specifically immigration related crime our reporting suggest that it is certainly happening, most PIDC members report instances of detecting false or fraudulent passports or other forms of individual identity at their borders, there are other problems about fraudulently obtained foundation documents to establish identities such as birth, marriage or death certificates to obtain genuine travel documents, there has been some emergence of that which is a concern. First of all we can say that we know for sure that the number of arrivals to the region are increasing, for sometime there has been little development in border management processes to reflect this changing and growing numbers of arrivals to the region and so this is becoming one of the big challenges is to start improving and enhancing their capacity to deal with the increasing arrivals at the border.  

Newsline: How is PIDC responding to such problems?

Matt Gibbs: It means new border management, IT systems, it means updating outdates legislations, a number of countries are still operating on legislations that we enacted in the 1940s which does not account for new crime types and things like identity fraud that we are starting to see now, so there is a real drive to improve to improve and build capacity within the region.  

Newsline: What are some of the challenges PIDC is facing in achieving these?

Matt Gibbs: What that means is in the mean time it is difficult to collect exact statistics and figures on the numbers and levels of identity fraud and other types of immigration related crime, it is only sort of now in the last couple of years for instance in Samoa having now developed a pretty comprehensive Border Management System (BMS) and reporting system that we can start to see some statistical reporting and begin to gauge an idea the levels of immigration related crimes. 

Newsline: How does this impact the future of regional immigration?

Matt Gibbs: Samoa’s circumstances are in the minority within the PIDC region, more and more countries are starting to realize particularly using forums like this that there is a requirement that they put pressure on their Governments, raise awareness with their Governments to start improving border management and building capacity. There is a sense that it is a problem, if it is growing then it’s difficult to exactly quantify in terms of numbers but we are consistently receiving reports from our members that they are experiencing these types of immigration related crimes, so it is happenings.  

Newsline: What has the meeting decided in regard to this?

Matt Gibbs: There are initiatives through this meeting to try and improve reporting capabilities so we can better understand the level and actual crime types. 

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