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While doing some research about freedom of movement and the history of passports, I came across an image on Wikipedia depicting a warning sign next to a toilet door at London Stansted Airport:

Stansted toilet door with Home Office warning

Close-up:

warningclose-up

The warning sign reads:

WARNING

Passengers who fail to produce a passport or other travel document at the UK Immigration Control for themselves or a dependent child, with whom they are travelling, risk prosecution.

Any person found guilty of this offence is liable to imprisonment for up to two years and / or a fine.

Do not destroy or dispose of any passport or similar document that you, or a child with you have used to travel to the United Kingdom.

Under what circumstances would a visitor be tempted to destroy their travel document(s) upon arrival at the airport?

todofixthis
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    For a particularly notable example of this situation, see the case of baseball player Jose Abreu, who said he ate his fake passport on a flight to the United States so he wouldn't be caught traveling on a forged document. – Zach Lipton Oct 31 '17 at 07:39
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    The general answer is: You only destroy voluntarily what is not useful to you. Now you can start constructing scenarios. (That line of thought does not come easily to the usual participants on this web site, who are from wealthy democratic countries and whose travel documents are a means to go almost anywhere.) – Peter - Reinstate Monica Oct 31 '17 at 13:05
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    Side note: this is also part of the reason why major destinations of illegal migration record the fingerprints of all applicants. As long as they can trace you back to your original identity they'll be able to deport you or at least try. Otherwise they're stuck with a suspicious illegal immigrant who is in a legal limbo – JonathanReez Oct 31 '17 at 16:36
  • I've been told that certain nationalities/religions are advised they should eat their passports if a plane is highjacked and they're worried they might be specifically targeted due to something their passport would reveal. How one might eat a passport is beyond me, though... :/ – StackExchange What The Heck Oct 31 '17 at 22:03
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    @yochannah According to Jose Abreu, a passport goes well with Heineken. – Zach Lipton Nov 01 '17 at 08:30
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    @yochannah: Yes, I am one of those! – dotancohen Nov 01 '17 at 10:43
  • This brings up a related question- since the airline has to check documents, to what degree can the airline produce evidence that the passenger's papers were present and in order before boarding? Assuming they can track the individual back to a single international flight, of course. – Spehro Pefhany Nov 01 '17 at 15:18
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    @PeterA.Schneider: That which is not useful to you. Or, that which is harmful to you. – rackandboneman Nov 02 '17 at 10:46
  • @yochannah told by who? Where does this story come from? – Summer Nov 02 '17 at 10:57
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    @JaneDoe1337 - see dotanchen's comment above. I suspect it originates from stories like this: https://www.jta.org/1968/07/26/archive/israeli-with-austrian-passport-ate-picture-showing-him-with-dayan – StackExchange What The Heck Nov 02 '17 at 15:20
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    @SpehroPefhany That will depend on the route and airline, ranging from "complete scans and machine readable data from passport and visa" to "they waved something that looked like government issued ID at the point when they got on the plane". Although the later should only be happening in places like the Schengen area where it doesn't matter so much. – origimbo Nov 02 '17 at 15:31
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    The simple answer to this question - it's a commonplace (ie, 10,000s a year) that folks arrive in the UK using any old bizarre documents; flush them down the toilet, and then assert they have to stay in the UK (after all, where would the UK "send them back to") – Fattie Nov 02 '17 at 21:23
  • @Fattie For the refusing country, it's not an issue. Here, the UK would refuse entry, and force the airline to transport the passenger back to the passenger's last point of departure. If the passenger couldn't be entered there, they'd be stuck until the departure country's immigration authorities negotiated with other countries and found a country to accept the passenger. The interim detention is not apt to be pretty, – DavidRecallsMonica Nov 17 '19 at 17:22

4 Answers4

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Why would a visitor destroy their travel document?

Not all visitors are genuine visitors with proper authorizations.

Many asylum seekers destroy their ID before presenting them to the border control in order to avoid getting deported back to their original country.

Then some people destroy their ID as soon as they get any hint of oncoming trouble with forgery, then they start making excuses about which document it was and how it got lost.

Those passports facilitate in their removal from the UK if their entry is denied. When they are gone down the drain, they make the process a little complicated.

A random example of such a complication

RAWALPINDI: Pakistani authorities on Wednesday refused to accept six migrants after the FIA found that they had been illegally deported to Pakistan from the UK.

About 36 others, who possessed travel documents, were accepted by Pakistani authorities – 34 of whom were allowed to go home after brief questioning. Two others were sent to the Anti-Human Trafficking Cell.

On Thursday December 3, the authorities refused to accept 49 illegal Pakistani immigrants who had been deported by Greek authorities. Only 19 people were accepted following verification. The remaining 30 deportees were sent back to Greece on the special flight that brought them to Pakistan.

(the emphasis is mine)


Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 states that

(1) A person commits an offence if at a leave or asylum interview he does not have with him an immigration document which

  • (a) is in force,and
  • (b) satisfactorily establishes his identity and nationality or citizenship.

(2) A person commits an offence if at a leave or asylum interview he does not have with him, in respect of any dependent child with whom he claims to be travelling or living, an immigration document which —

  • (a) is in force, and
  • (b) satisfactorily establishes the child’s identity and nationality or citizenship.

Reference

Its increasingly becoming difficult for that technique to work everywhere. This notice is one of the steps towards that.

Read this excellent flyer by Refugee Action Coalition to learn more. It includes

Sometimes asylum seekers need false identity documents to be able to get away safely, in this case, they destroy the documents once they no longer need them so they or the people who helped them get the false documents don’t get into trouble

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Hanky Panky
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  • Interesting. I'm kind of surprised that the flights accepted these passengers for boarding back to a country that just deported them. – reirab Oct 31 '17 at 19:11
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    @reirab They'd have no choice since they would need to agree to before gaining permission to fly into the country and land at the airport. In both cases, the deporting governments appear to have specially chartered a plane to transport the migrants to Pakistan. It's likely that the airplane operators would have fully expected that they would be forced to bring a few of the deportees back and negotiated their contracts accordingly. – Ross Ridge Oct 31 '17 at 20:25
  • So is it a crime if your passport expires before your UK immigration interview? – Evgeny Nov 01 '17 at 05:43
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    @Evgeny according to the legislation above if you can provide a valid reason it may not be a crime but IANAL. But the travel related aspect of your question i can try to answer. If your passport was going to expire during your flight there is a high chance you wouldn't be on that flight in the first place and would have been refused boarding. – Hanky Panky Nov 01 '17 at 06:18
  • @Evgeny Many countries require that your passport be valid for n months past the date you need the visa/residence permit, presumably to avoid having to deal with situations where someone no longer has a valid travel document but is still waiting for permission to enter/stay. – errantlinguist Nov 02 '17 at 10:09
  • I somewhat object to the term "asylum seekers" in this context since the people who destroy their passports are plain simple illegal border trespassers (and... worse). Were they truly asylum seekers, they wouldn't destroy their papers. People who demonstrate a genuine need of asylum (for being politically pursued or in immediate danger for their lives) are not turned away anywhere in Europe, including in the UK. In Germany, not even people who aren't in immediate danger are turned away if they don't come from a "safe country". Those who destroy their papers are not asylum seekers. – Damon Nov 02 '17 at 12:33
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    @Damon There are far too many assumptions in your comment, as well as a misunderstanding of terminology. You seem to be using the term "asylum seeker" to mean "refugee", but these are not the same thing. – JBentley Nov 02 '17 at 13:00
  • @JBentley: I see, my bad. Though the term as such is in my opinion wrong (since they do not seek asylum at all), I see that it is indeed correct per the common usage. What I wanted to point out is that those who destroy their identification papers do so for a good reason, to exploit law and formalities in order to stay in a place where they would otherwise never be admitted to stay (much to the disadvantage of those who are truly in need of asylum). – Damon Nov 02 '17 at 13:10
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    @Damon They are seeking asylum, but not necessarily for legitimate reasons (although sometimes they may believe they are for legitimate reasons even if the relevant authorities don't agree with them); One could claim that they're a refugee fleeing bad music tastes and apply for asylum on those grounds, but that doesn't mean that said person will be offered asylum to escape bad music. – errantlinguist Nov 02 '17 at 17:17
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    @Damon a murderer running from justice by going to another country would be an asylum seeker. Exploitation does not disclude them from the definition. –  Nov 02 '17 at 18:05
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A friend of mine, who was doing part-time work for the French government, was called in to help interview North Korean asylum seekers. Turns out they were not from Korea, North or South: they were Chinese, and didn't speak one word of Korean. My friend, who happens to speak Chinese too, found out they were native speakers of Chinese, most probably from Dongbei.

They had destroyed their Chinese passports after arriving in France, claiming to have destroyed their North Korean passports so they wouldn't be sent back there. Needless to say, their asylum was denied...

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To expand on Hanky Panky's answer, a country can only remove or deport a person to a country that cannot turn them away, which in reality means a country where they hold nationality and thus have the right to travel documents from.

If the person presents to immigration with a passport and is refused entry, they can be removed by ways of the airline - either a return flight to the origin country, or to the national's home country, at the airline's expense.

If the person presents to immigration with no travel documents at all, they have to be held in the U.K., which increases their chances of speaking to a lawyer, getting legal help, escaping etc.

Also, minors are treated differently than adults - if an 18 year old can claim they are younger, that claim cannot be rejected at face value and the case will be treated as a minor, meaning it's easier to stay. With a travel document, these claims can be rejected easily.

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Watch UK Border Force, and you will see that many deportation cases turn on whether the person's travel documents can be found. So when they round them up at a workplace, say, they investigate to try to figure out where they live, then they enter that domicile and search it exhaustively.

If they are able to find a genuine passport, it's a straightforward affair -- into the detention van they go, and they are detained and deported fairly quickly.

If they are unable to find travel documents, that puts them in a quandary. They can't deport them to a country they only seem to be from. They must get the person's details, contact the foreign country, and try to get the foreign country to confirm they are a citizen and send over travel documents.

A country like Canada would cooperate, however a country like Bangladesh has a pretty good deal: their citizen is implanted an affluent first world country, making a fantastic wage (by home standards), and sending much of it home to Bangladesh. So there is a perverse incentive for Bangladesh to not help the UK sort out their citizenship.

On the TV program, you often see the Border Force give them a strongly worded admonishment not to seek employment in the UK... And resignedly let them go. Because realistically they do not have the detainee space to hold people for the extended time it might take for the home country to produce.

And the people seek work immediately, of course.

You can imagine the same occurs for people caught at the airport; the government can't detain them potentially forever, so they release them into the general public, with that same stern admonishment.

So for someone illegally in the country who aims to stay, it is definitely in their interest for their proper passport to disappear. I could see a traveler wanting to retain it in a secret place for when they want to travel, but that is impossible at the airport.

Harper - Reinstate Monica
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    Some countries don't have very good control over their travel documents or much in the way of accounting for their citizens. Aside from the "perverse incentive" problem, there may simply be no way for a country, especially a poorer country without much infrastructure around government documents, to establish whether someone is a citizen. This is doubly true if the individual in question gives a false name and/or doesn't cooperate with the process. There's not much the UK can do if another country simply can't account for a purported citizen to send him back. – Zach Lipton Nov 01 '17 at 08:28
  • What are U.K. laws regarding “undocumented” workers? In USA, if an employer cannot prove the employee is legal, the employer has significant penalties. – WGroleau Nov 01 '17 at 10:19
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    @WGroleau Employers (and recently landlords) have a duty of to check the status of their employees/tenants https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/employers-illegal-working-penalties https://www.gov.uk/check-tenant-right-to-rent-documents Having said that, there's no real expectation that non-Immigration staff would be able to identify forged documents. – origimbo Nov 01 '17 at 13:50
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    And often employers provide the housing for their employees, it's a way to assure "lock in" of the employee, and this starts to blur into human trafficking... – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 01 '17 at 14:46
  • The employer or landlord may not know it's forged, but at least the document exists, avoiding the problem that the destruction law was aimed at. – WGroleau Nov 01 '17 at 15:45
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    @WGroleau interesting theory, "the airline let me on with this" and "I did all this through an agency, I had no idea, I figured at $3000 they must be legit". I wonder what would happen. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 01 '17 at 17:16
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    That TV show is government sponsored propaganda. They have control over what is shown, so they can promote their message about immigration. – vclaw Nov 01 '17 at 20:27
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    @vclaw: What do you think is "their message about immigration", with respect to the topic of this question? – O. R. Mapper Nov 01 '17 at 21:00
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    @WGroleau: "but at least the document exists, avoiding the problem that the destruction law was aimed at" - no, the real document could have been destroyed, thus they were let in until their nationality is sorted out. But by the time the employer or landlord checks a document, the visitor could have somehow arranged for a forged document. One that would not convince immigration officers, but one that employers or landlords couldn't tell apart from a real one. – O. R. Mapper Nov 01 '17 at 21:03
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    @O.R.Mapper I for one think there is huge confusion by the public about exactly what Border Force is and does, and by showing how the system works and the common blunders people make, they can reduce avoidable blunders by the public, e.g. Saving Nigerians a fortune on "agencies" and fake documents that don't work, and making people less afraid of the immigration line at the airport, or raids. I also think they want to "scare people straight" and to that extent, they overstate the effectiveness of their screenings and patrols. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 02 '17 at 01:04
  • @Harper: "overstate the effectiveness" - effectiveness was not the term that came to my mind when reading "you often see the Border Force give them a strongly worded admonishment not to seek employment in the UK... And resignedly let them go. (...) And the people seek work immediately, of course." – O. R. Mapper Nov 02 '17 at 05:46
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    @O.R.Mapper that's an example wheree they're being honet, probably with a motive of swaying voters and MPs to toughen the laws. I was thinking more in terms of making it sound like everyone who tries to sneak items through customs is caught. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 02 '17 at 05:54
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    "Paddy wagon" while a relatively obscure term, probably isn't appropriate for use here. – Separatrix Nov 02 '17 at 14:04
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    @Separatrix my bad. I do keep a list of terms that have unintended inferences for UK readers, but I left it at home in my fanny pack. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 02 '17 at 15:50
  • @Separatrix is "paddy wagon" really obscure? Well, maybe nowadays, but not 40 years ago... – RonJohn Nov 03 '17 at 05:47
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    @RonJohn, it's technically regional slang which people are forgetting the reason for, it's still called a "black maria" in some areas even though they haven't been black for as long as the Maria Coachworks hasn't existed for. – Separatrix Nov 03 '17 at 08:06
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    @Separatrix while I'd definitely heard of people getting thrown in the paddy wagon, "black maria" is completely new to me! :) – RonJohn Nov 03 '17 at 12:18