'Electronic Gateways': The new biometric identification Bill : Melbourne Indymedia

Electronic gateways
This is just a brief overview of the new migration biometric identification legislation that has been passed by the House of Representatives.
The Immigration department has proposed a new biometric system of border protection in a bill recently passed in the House of reps-“Migration Legislation Amendment (Identification and Authentication) Bill”. Taking the EU system Eurodac as its precedent, the Bill outlines an integrated biometric identification database whereby ‘non-citizen’ will have to submit a range of “personal identifiers” to the government including finger prints, hand prints, photos of face and shoulders, measurement of height and weight and iris scans. This information will be centralized in a national database for the use of immigration officials.

The Immigration department claims it is aimed at cracking down on “identity fraud” where a non-citizen “pretends to be someone else in order to obtain a particular immigration outcome”. The bill deepens the criminalization of non-citizens, explicitly linking the necessity of bio-metric testing to combating terrorism, “cross border crime” as well as “social security fraud and tax evasion” of ‘lawful and unlawful’ non-citizens. In a similar way to the existence of detention camps, the Government justifies this system by claiming it will ensure Australia is not a “‘soft target’ for terrorists and other people of concern”.
The current migration regime already allows biometric testing, by force, on anyone who is in an immigration camp. This bill reiterates this power and while it does not claim that direct state force may be used to do biometric tests on all non-citizens it makes it clear that non-compliance will result in being thrown into a camp or the invalidation of visa claims. The bill further deepens the sovereign-like status of the immigration minister giving him the power to decide which biometric tests will be used and in which circumstances.

The Government intends to set a precedent with the Bill for the expansion of this regime beyond its immigration status into an “electronic gateway” whereby the interaction of any body with the State, including movement across borders, applying for social security etc, would be subject to a series of biometric verification tests.

The immediate reality of this bill is that it gives the state immense power to deepen its control and regulation not just of the movement of people across Australia’s borders, but within them as well. It allows the State to further narrow the basis on which those applying for asylum will be granted visas and refines the process whereby the State can track down those deemed illegal- visa over stayers and those who escape from the camps- in order to round them up into camps and deport them.

Of course there are no surprise from the ALP. Shadow minister for Immigration Nicola Roxon is pursuing labor’s ‘me too!!’ line since Labor is the ‘party of immigration control’. Her only objection is that the bill is does not rigorously outline the regulation procedures for a biometric system.