Outbound passengers at PJIA
to be controlled as of December
By Alfred Harley
PHILIPSBURG--Twenty Immigration officers left Saturday for a three-month training course in Curaçao. On their return they will form part of the Immigration Team at Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA), where passengers leaving the island will also be subject to Immigration controls as of December.
Chief Immigration Officer Police Commissioner Ademar Doran told The Daily Herald Monday that the intention was also to extend the opening hours for Immigration offices at the Pointe Blanche harbour and at the bridge in Simpson Bay.
He said this was necessary to implement 100 per cent control of arriving and departing passengers. As it stands now, persons leaving Anguilla at night to come to St. Maarten to enjoy themselves do not go through Immigration, depending on their time of arrival.
Doran said the 20 Immigration officers would go through the first of three modules, which involved training at the Police Training School in Rio Canario, Curaçao. They will be trained to handle basic Immigration-related matters that they will encounter working at any port of entry in the Netherlands Antilles.
They return to St. Maarten in December and will be allowed to go through the second module of the training here, which will be “on the job training.”
Doran said, “The third and final module of their training will be a combination of practical and theoretical training and will include language training.” He said they would be taught basic French, Spanish, Dutch and English, to allow proper communication with the majority of nationalities they would encounter while working.
The three modules will be completed within one year, after which the 20 trainees will become full-fledged Immigration officers. Doran said it must be made clear that they would not become police officers, but would have some authority, as do other Immigration officers, similar to that of a police officer.
In general, he said, police Immigration officers are field officers who are charged with apprehending and repatriating illegal residents, while an Immigration officer deals strictly with port-of-entry control.
This new control procedure where passengers leaving the island are concerned has been discussed for several years, as it is believed it makes the job of the Immigration Department complete.
It allows the Immigration Department to have an accurate record of the length of time visitors stay on the island. In principle, the idea is that when a passenger arrives on the island he or she submits his/her intended address on the visa form.
The visitor is then given a specific period within which he/she must leave the island and that information is entered into the Immigration Department’s computer system. Once that time expires, it should correspond with outbound Immigration form showing that the visitor has left the island.
If, according to the database, a visitor has not left the island within the prescribed period, the field Immigration officer goes to the last-known address to detain him or her pending repatriation to his or her country.
