Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can clearly confirm the assessment that this has improved document security. As I mentioned before, ID cards and German passports already had high document security. However, there have been trials to tamper with them or manipulate them and they were more or less successful,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. It was indeed a pleasure. I wish you all the best.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, we have a special procedure at airports, although due to European provision, the differences between both are not that big. Usually we identify the nationality of the persons concerned, and persons with manifestly unfounded applications can be kept at the airport. The asylum

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As far as I'm informed, the average time.... If you want to have more detailed information, please send me something in writing, but usually it's done within one week.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not quite sure whether I got the question. I'll respond in the way I understood it. Usually we do not rely only on biometric identifiers. We always take into account the classic way, the documents of the persons concerned. So we do not rely on electronic systems. These peopl

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Intelligence, as I mentioned before, is relevant to particular countries. The European Union member states have a list of these countries. Prior to a visa issuance, all member states are requested to check their information about specific visa applicants. They have one week's tim

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. I think this is the challenge all the countries face that have a certain interest in people being able to work and live. Therefore, I think the problems in Canada are the same as in Germany. We always try to clearly distinguish between those who wan

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Usually if we have intelligence that this person belongs to a specific group, any application will be rejected. It might be, however, that for intelligence and security reasons we issue a visa. For example, for covert operations and to see and to detect terrorist networks in the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The acceleration of certain visa categories is a subject of the political debate. We have a pilot project at Frankfurt airport, for example, where we have a partly automated border control and an iris scan is used for frequent travellers. These persons can be processed quickly th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Not yet, but in the context of the so-called smart border initiative, which I mentioned before, it is also envisaged to introduce a system called the registered travellers program. Within this RTP, as we call it, will be the possibility for bona fide travellers to easily access t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  According to constitutional law there is always the possibility to appeal the rejection of an asylum case. It goes through two or three instances, so it might take some time, but of course this is ensured due to constitutional reasons.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, this is difficult to say, actually, and unfortunately the first half of your sentence was cut, so I would prefer if you could once again ask your question, because I heard only a bit of it.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's difficult to say an average time, because the federal states are in charge of enforcing the residence law, and therefore it's always difficult for us to provide figures. This is not a category we actually look at. It differs very much according to whether or not the person i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As a matter of fact—and here I speak as a civil servant of the ministry of the interior—unfortunately we do not have something like an ETA, as other countries have introduced. Therefore I cannot answer this question.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are different groups of persons who are not admitted to the country, and here I name a list you should also have in Canada. This is the United Nations decisions as regards the list of persons under the suspicion of terrorism. This is of course a regime we will also fulfill.