Passport forgers Sample Clauses

Passport forgers. False or falsified passports were discovered in nearly every attempt at Chinese human smuggling through Schiphol. Forged documents were also found in all the major investigations in which the police searched premises. It was only in cases where the smuggling was done by road that it was unusual to find docu- ments, but that does not mean that forged documents were not used somewhere en route. Many migrants state that they crossed the border legally when they left China, but that during the journey the transporter confiscated their passports. The last leg of the journey is then done in secret, without papers. It should be noted that not every legal border crossing involves false or falsified documents. An unknown number of illegal migrants leave China using their own passports. For example, one migrant told the police that his smuggler instructed him to obtain a passport with a visa for Thailand through regular procedures. The smug- gler became involved only after the migrant arrived in Thailand (case 53). In another case, a migrant left China on her own passport. In the Netherlands, the smugglers wanted her to hand over her passport. She refused because it was hers (case 6). Another migrant was given a falsified passport only after reaching Schiphol Airport (case 56). The major advantage for illegal migrants in leaving China legally is that they will not be subject to punishment if they return. Even if they go back years later and their original passport has expired, they can obtain a new Chinese passport for a fee. Conversely, illegal departure is frowned upon by the Chinese authorities and will cause the migrant problems if he returns to his homeland. The biggest document vendors appear to be based abroad. They are able to get Netherlands-based smuggling groups ten, twenty or even more passports of different nationalities at the same time. Sometimes the passports are made to order. For instance, in France a smuggler took small groups of Chinese illegal migrants to a local commercial photographer to have their pictures taken. The pictures were then sent to a man in Thailand, who used them to doctor the neces- sary passports and sent them back to the smuggler (case 9). Documents were usually dispatched through regular courier services such as DHL, Fedex, UPS, etc. Each shipment would contain several passports. One that was intercepted contained ten Japanese passports and one Chinese passport sent from China (case 17). However, because these vendors live ab...