Border control
Measures taken to regulate the movement of goods and people across borders / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Border control?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Border control comprises measures taken by governments to monitor[1] and regulate the movement of people, animals, and goods across land, air, and maritime borders. While border control is typically associated with international borders, it also encompasses controls imposed on internal borders within a single state.
This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. (December 2023) |
Border control measures serve a variety of purposes, ranging from enforcing customs, sanitary and phytosanitary, or biosecurity regulations to restricting migration. While some borders (including most states' internal borders and international borders within the Schengen Area) are open and completely unguarded, others (including the vast majority of borders between countries as well as some internal borders) are subject to some degree of control and may be crossed legally only at designated checkpoints. Border controls in the 21st century are tightly intertwined with intricate systems of travel documents, visas, and increasingly complex policies that vary between countries.
It is estimated that the indirect economic cost of border controls, particularly migration restrictions, cost many trillions of dollars and the size of the global economy could double if migration restrictions were lifted.[2]
States and rulers have always regarded the ability to determine who enters or remains in their territories as a key test of their sovereignty, but prior to World War I, border controls were only sporadically implemented.[3] In medieval Europe, for example, the boundaries between rival countries and centres of power were largely symbolic or consisted of amorphous borderlands, 'marches', and 'debatable lands' of indeterminate or contested status and the real 'borders' consisted of the fortified walls that surrounded towns and cities, where the authorities could exclude undesirable or incompatible people at the gates, from vagrants, beggars and the 'wandering poor', to 'masterless women', lepers, Romani, or Jews.[4]
The concept of border controls has its origins in antiquity. In Asia, the existence of border controls is evidenced in classical texts. The Arthashastra (c. 3rd century BCE) makes mention of passes issued at the rate of one masha per pass to enter and exit the country. Chapter 34 of the Second Book of Arthashastra concerns with the duties of the Mudrādhyakṣa (lit. 'Superintendent of Seals') who must issue sealed passes before a person could enter or leave the countryside.[5] Passports resembling those issued today were an important part of the Chinese bureaucracy as early as the Western Han (202 BCE-220 CE), if not in the Qin Dynasty. They required such details as age, height, and bodily features.[6] These passports (zhuan) determined a person's ability to move throughout imperial counties and through points of control. Even children needed passports, but those of one year or less who were in their mother's care may not have needed them.[6]
Medieval period
In the medieval Islamic Caliphate, a form of passport was the bara'a, a receipt for taxes paid. Border controls were in place to ensure that only people who paid their zakah (for Muslims) or jizya (for dhimmis) taxes could travel freely between different regions of the Caliphate; thus, the bara'a receipt was a "basic passport".[7]
In medieval Europe, passports were issued since at least the reign of Henry V of England, as a means of helping his subjects prove who they were in foreign lands. The earliest reference to these documents is found in a 1414 Act of Parliament.[8][9] In 1540, granting travel documents in England became a role of the Privy Council of England, and it was around this time that the term "passport" was used. In 1794, issuing British passports became the job of the Office of the Secretary of State.[8] The 1548 Imperial Diet of Augsburg required the public to hold imperial documents for travel, at the risk of permanent exile.[10] During World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people with useful skills. These controls remained in place after the war, becoming a standard, though controversial, procedure. British tourists of the 1920s complained, especially about attached photographs and physical descriptions, which they considered led to a "nasty dehumanisation".[11]
Starting in the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire established quarantine stations on many of its borders to control disease. For example, along the Greek-Turkish border, all travellers entering and exiting the Ottoman Empire would be quarantined for 9–15 days. These stations would often be manned by armed guards. If plague appeared, the Ottoman army would be deployed to enforce border control and monitor disease.[12]
Modern history
One of the earliest systematic attempts of modern nation states to implement border controls to restrict entry of particular groups were policies adopted by Canada, Australia, and America to curtail immigration of Asians in white settler states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first anti-East Asian policy implemented in this era was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in America, which was followed suit by the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 in Canada, which imposed what came to be called the Chinese head tax. These policies was a sign of injustice and unfair treatment to the Chinese workers because the jobs they engaged in were mostly menial jobs.[13] Similar policies were adopted in various British colonies in Australia over the latter half of the 19th century targeting Asian immigrants arriving as a result of the region's series of gold rushes[14] as well as Kanakas (Pacific Islanders brought into Australia as indentured labourers)[15] who alongside the Asians were perceived by trade unionists and White blue collar workers as a threat to the wages of White settlers.[16] Following the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, these discriminatory border control measures quickly expanded into the White Australia Policy, while subsequent legislation in America (e.g. the Immigration Act of 1891, the Naturalisation Act of 1906, and the Immigration Act of 1917) resulted in an even stricter policy targeting immigrants from both Asia and parts of southern and eastern Europe.
Even following the adoption of measures such as the White Australia Policy and the Chinese Exclusion Act in English-speaking settler colonies, pervasive control of international borders remained a relatively rare phenomenon until the early 20th century, prior to which many states had open international borders either in practice or due to a lack of any legal restriction. John Maynard Keynes identified World War I in particular as the point when such controls became commonplace.[17]
Decolonisation during the twentieth century saw the emergence of mass emigration from nations in the Global South, thus leading former colonial occupiers to introduce stricter border controls.[18] In the United Kingdom this process took place in stages, with British nationality law eventually shifting from recognising all Commonwealth citizens as British subjects to today's complex British nationality law which distinguishes between British citizens, modern British Subjects, British Overseas Citizens, and overseas nationals, with each non-standard category created as a result of attempts to balance border control and the need to mitigate statelessness. This aspect of the rise of border control in the 20th century has proven controversial. The British Nationality Law 1981 has been criticised by experts,[lower-alpha 1] as well as by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of the United Nations,[lower-alpha 2] on the grounds that the different classes of British nationality it created are, in fact, closely related to the ethnic origins of their holders.
The creation of British Nationality (Overseas) status, for instance, (with fewer privileges than British citizen status) was met with criticism from many Hong Kong residents who felt that British citizenship would have been more appropriate in light of the "moral debt" owed to them by the UK.[lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4] Some British politicians[lower-alpha 5] and magazines[lower-alpha 6] also criticised the creation of BN(O) status. In 2020, the British government under Boris Johnson announced a programme under which BN(O)s would have leave to remain in the UK with rights to work and study for five years, after which they may apply for settled status. They would then be eligible for full citizenship after holding settled status for 12 months.[24] This was implemented as the eponymously named "British National (Overseas) visa", a residence permit that BN(O)s and their dependent family members have been able to apply for since 31 January 2021.[25][26] BN(O)s and their dependents who arrived in the UK before the new immigration route became available were granted "Leave Outside the Rules" at the discretion of the Border Force to remain in the country for up to six months as a temporary measure.[27] In effect, this retroactively granted BN(O)s a path to right of abode in the United Kingdom. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, about 7,000 people had entered the UK under this scheme between July 2020 and January 2021.[28]
Ethnic tensions created during colonial occupation also resulted in discriminatory policies being adopted in newly independent African nations, such as Uganda under Idi Amin which banned Asians from Uganda, thus creating a mass exodus of the (largely Gujarati[29][30]) Asian community of Uganda. Such ethnically driven border control policies took forms ranging from anti-Asian sentiment in East Africa to Apartheid policies in South Africa and Namibia (then known as Southwest Africa under South African rule) which created bantustans[lower-alpha 7] and pass laws[lower-alpha 8] to segregate and impose border controls against non-whites, and encouraged immigration of whites at the expense of Blacks as well as Indians and other Asians. Whilst border control in Europe and east of the Pacific have tightened over time,[18] they have largely been liberalised in Africa, from Yoweri Museveni's reversal of Idi Amin's anti-Asian border controls[lower-alpha 9] to the fall of Apartheid (and thus racialised border controls) in South Africa.
The development of border control policies over the course of the 20th century also saw the standardisation of refugee travel documents under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951[lower-alpha 10] and the 1954 Convention travel document[37] for stateless people under the similar 1954 statelessness convention.
COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 produced a drastic tightening of border controls across the globe. Many countries and regions have imposed quarantines, entry bans, or other restrictions for citizens of or recent travellers to the most affected areas.[38] Other countries and regions have imposed global restrictions that apply to all foreign countries and territories, or prevent their own citizens from travelling overseas.[39] The imposition of border controls has curtailed the spread of the virus, but because they were first implemented after community spread was established in multiple countries in different regions of the world, they produced only a modest reduction in the total number of people infected[40] These strict border controls economic harm to the tourism industry through lost income and social harm to people who were unable to travel for family matters or other reasons. When the travel bans are lifted, many people are expected to resume traveling. However, some travel, especially business travel, may be decreased long-term as lower cost alternatives, such as teleconferencing and virtual events, are preferred.[41] A possible long-term impact has been a decline of business travel and international conferencing, and the rise of their virtual, online equivalents.[42] Concerns have been raised over the effectiveness of travel restrictions to contain the spread of COVID-19.[43]