Why do they ask families questions at passport control when retiring to the uk?

[blackbirdsinginginthenight]

It's usually things like - where have you been? For Xmas? How long were you there for? Where are you going next? Etc- like small talk but today I answered a question for where we had been, and then didn't hear his second question about how long we had been away for and he asked it again very seriously with some more follow up questions.

What sort of things are they looking for or to find out? If you'd smuggled a child back into the country then the questions aren't enough to suss that out, and if you weren't allowed in the country surely that would flag up on your passports?

Always wondered and thought a mumsnetter would know!

Watching that ATM (guilty pleasure, along with Traffic Cops). I spend the entire Aus programme muttering 'what part of' declare ANY food you're carrying' do you not get??'

Have always found declaring food the quickest way through Australian immigration. Pulled aside after passport control, bag checked and on my way while everyone else is being checked and scanned.

What makes it so annoying is that when you go through the automatic gates obviously no-one is asking anything. I find if I hold all the passports they generally let us go and if (non-British) DH holds them they have a little power play. Arseholes.

To ensure that you are you say you are and screen for a range of issues.

People trafficking.
fake passports.
drug smuggling.

it’s pretty endless.

we had a similar thing.
I was with ds who was about 3. They asked him what my name was. He looked confused and said Firstname. They didn't look happy and continued to press him as to who I was.

I asked him - what do YOU call be sweetie and he looked really confused and said Mummy???
and they let him through.
Both Uk passports and same surname. I couldn't work out why they thought basing anything on a toddlers answer was valid.

There is different body language and behaviout with just nervousness and nervousness from actually being caught.
Body language and behaviours are quite fascinating!

Kids can’t go through the automatic gates though.

Catching the Eurostar back to the UK from France last year my DP was asked where he'd been, how long for and whether he was travelling alone. I was asked nothing. He is indo-Jamaican with a British passport, I am white British. I assume he was quizzed due to his skin colour, he says he is asked questions pretty every time he enters the UK via a border force person rather than the e-gates.

The UK is sadly a hub of a modern day slave trade. See the 2005 case of the teenage girls auctioned off at Gatwick Airport Costa Coffee.

Children and young people are trafficked into the UK for forced labour, prostitution, ritual purposes, organ theft - see the previous reference to the child Adam and the case of Victoria Climbié.

Children are kidnapped by their own parents in either direction - see the recent case of a boy who reappeared last month several years after disappearing.

It's inconvenient to you. Imagine how inconvenient it was for them.

I don't know what they're called these days (I retired quite a while ago) but immigration officers are at the forefront combatting a trade in human lives happening in this country.

Checking a child knows the person they're travelling with, that they look like the photo in the passport, that people can answer simple questions with ease can mean the difference between detecting an incident and missing it.

And imagine how you would feel if you were the officer who'd missed one because you hadn't asked on a twelve hour night shift.

It's not unreasonable to be asked questions at both ends; I have been. With or without DC or partner.

I got asked a question at Boston Logan airport a few years ago. Unfortunately I had two reported eardrums from the flight and couldn’t really hear anything. Apparently “London” is not the correct answer to “Why have you come to the US.?”.

The man was not happy when I tried to explain that he would need to write things down.

Mo Farah was brought into the UK on another child's passport, not a British passport admittedly, but shows it can happen.

Thinking about it I helped a young mum who was bringing her baby back to the UK. She was married to a man from another country and she was trying to escape an abusive marriage. The baby had a passport from the other country and she had problems at passport control as the baby had no visa to enter. She was in a state but finally got through and I was just behind her. I asked her if she was OK and she asked if she could borrow some money to phone her mother. She didn't have a penny so I gave her the money and some money for a coffee while she was waiting. She had no luggage, she was too scared to try and get anything out of the house so she had a bag with nappies and a change of clothes for the baby. I often wonder how everything went for her.

They ask a lot of random questions to try to hone their lie detection skills and to try to catch you out if you are planning doing something illegal.

When people are lying then they tend to hesitate when giving a response, and very few people are good at making stuff up on the spot quickly.

When they ask you random questions, like how far is it from here to home they probably don't have a clue half the time themselves. They are just watching you for your reaction and the pause that inevitably comes before the lie.

I should have said, we didn't have any kids with us. Just two middle aged people who I think look like an obvious pairing. It was strange to be asked anything beyond where we've come from and where we're going. I guess we must have been giving off something that made him interested in us.

I hate it when you need to remove your glasses as my eyesight is appalling and I can't see a bloody thing without them. E-gates are a nightmare if you have to take your glasses off, I may as well be blind. I try to keep my contact lenses in but on a long flight it's too uncomfortable.

DH & DS got pulled up when they tried going through passport control separately to me and DD. It didn't help that DS has the same mixed race complexion that I have and was travelling with a white man.

I fly most months for work and am almost always asked where I'm coming back from.

I went through the automatic gates the other week and then there was a little booth after the e gate and a man there stopped me and asked me stuff.

@TheThingIsYeah Of course they do! Can you imagine what would happen if a car was driving at 70 mph through central London going through red lights and hardly slowing at junctions with no siren and a car was crossing the junction or turning across the lanes?

By using the siren they are warning other traffic to slow down and be ready to get out of the way.

I agree, I generally declare food or medicines (or both) when entering Australia. The first time I did it I generally wasn't certain if I needed to declare things but thought I'd better, and found it so straightforward realised it was the best option. Actually, the other thing we often declare is contact with farmland, as we frequently walk fields with cattle / our usual route into town has cattle turned out part of the year. Since we can truthfully explain that we scrub our shoes and wipe them over with disinfectant before travelling, we get waved through. I learnt that one from trips back to the UK with my mother as a child. It's sad how many people don't understand biosecurity.

When DD was a baby, they would ask DS what her name was, I always thought that was quite a clever and unobtrusive way to check that we were who we said we were! I've always been quite impressed at the range of questions they have for the kids which are non-threatening but provide the info they need.

We only really go abroad by ferry (where were never had any such questions) so I've never experienced this. What do they do about small children who won't talk to new people? Both my children were resolutely silent around strangers until around 3.5, despite our best efforts to raise chatty, friendly children and constantly modelling small talk. There's just no way they'd have said anything audible to a strange man in uniform.

They've always been very interested in my younger DD. But ignore older DD (less than 2 years gap). Good job really... DD2 is extremely eloquent and can talk for Britain but DD1 has selective mutism... but they can't tell that by looking at her! I think its her name... they have no idea how to pronounce it so don't try. Except when we flew through Edinburgh (her name is more heard of in the Hebridies)

I'm quite miffed now that border control don't care about where I've been.
I returned to UK once in a while when living abroad, sometimes with one or more kids. Only to be greeted by them handing me back the passports and saying Welcome home.
They still only say that now we are living in UK. You all must look dodgy as fuck!

Exactly

Staff will be trained, presumably, on the sort of questions to ask and suspicious signs to look out for. A child with a British passport and the same name as at least one adult travelling with them could still be being taken without permission from a parent resident in another country.

I have actually seen someone (not with kids) being led away from inbound Passport control and overheard a member of staff saying something like 'Didn't know his date of birth'. Pretty rookie error for travelling on a fake passport!