AIBU to think this is just wrong?

[Cooki3Monst3r]

So, DH, me, DD 4yo and DD 2yo are on the way to France, about to take the Euro Tunnel.

We're white. We're mid 30s. We're driving a Range Rover and we're rammed to the roof with bags.

Yes, we look like an average harmless family going on holiday.

But does that really mean it's OK for Passport Control to wave us on without seeing our passports?

This was on the UK side. "Oh, they clearly couldn't give a flying fuck who they let in to a tunnel under the sea with hundreds of other people, and out in to wider Europe." I thought.

"No worries, I'm sure the French won't let us in without seeing our passports." I said to DH.

Nope, no passport control on that side.

There are several reasons why this is upsetting me.

1. I just paid a bloody fortune for 3 new passports for me and DCs. If the same happens on the way back, I needn't have bothered.

2. I can't help but think if I was a black 20yo male, or a middled aged middle-eastern man with a beard and a backpack on the passenger seat, or wearing a burka, I would have been stopped. Maybe that's my own subconscious racism coming out. I don't know.

3. I had two kids in the car!!! Those passport control guys had no idea whether those children were mine!!!! So any fucker can apparently take my kids abroad!! I do not like this one little bit.

4. There were several people in the passport kiosk. It was a quiet day and no one was immediately behind us. What the hell else did they have to do other than check our passports??

AIBU to be deeply concerned about this?

My twin sister, me and our husbands were checked coming back from France last year. We're a bunch of white old foggies.

UK isn't in Schengen but there is the flexibility to behave as if it is depending on how and where you are leaving (passports are partly tracked on planes just for security reasons.)

If you remember the liberalisation of border controls in the 1990s pre-9/11 most UK exit and indeed entry points allowed EU passport holders to behave nearly as if the UK was in Schengen (oh, the days of getting off a plane from the EU at Stansted or similar and being able to just wave the cover of your EU passport in the air as you walked through the border control gate!) They were so much more bothered about drugs during that period, and if you got off a flight from some European countries you didn't get a passport check but you got drug-dog checked. Now all the dogs in airports seem to be explosive sniffer dogs. It was after 9/11 when border security got tightened up that they reintroduced much more formal border controls (incl. electronic passport scanning and monitoring), but the main focus of these is on airports because of the terrorism risk.

I remember travelling to the continent by ferry in the 1980s on family holidays and we were always waved through without checking. A car full of hot angry children sitting on sleeping bags and luggage probably didn't look like some kind of security/smuggling risk!

YABU. There are millions of cases, "I could be black, white, Jewish, Muslim" etc. Don't go looking for problems when none exists.

We got our passports seriously checked coming back from France this summer - our car was just as you describe OP, but he was seriously checking DD (who was asleep, and whose passport photo was taken 3yrs ago). He said he couldn't be sure it was her.

He resorted to asking our 2 ds's - "Is that your sister?" (to which they thankfully answered yes) before letting us through

I remember when I was a teenager, being on holiday with my parents one year. We were pulled across for a search. Unfortunately they didn't realise how much my mother can talk, so after about 30 minutes of her incessant chatter they sent us through without actually searching our car. i felt so bloody sorry for the guys, you really can't shut her up when she gets going.

I travelled from the US to the UK without a single person checking my DD's passport. Quite scary!

OP, you're right about leaving the UK with children though - I'm trying to remember if we've ever had our passports checked leaving the UK on the eurotunnel. That is quite concerning, thinking about it.

My dh is so proud of his UK passport (he's black and originally from Cote d'Ivoire) He recently travelled alone to Abidjan via Amsterdam and Paris. He clutched his much-loved passport but wasn't asked to show it once. Coming back to UK, he had to produce it at Felix-Houphouet-Boigny airport to board the plane to Paris, but thereafter nobody was interested. Going by your theory op you'd suppose that a lone black man (and his English is still terrible!) would be challenged, but it seems not.

He had the same thing when he went to Belgium alone. Coming in to Norwich airport he marched through unseen because the counter wasn't even staffed! He just collected his bag from the carousel, strolled to the Arrivals gate and out to my car. So they don't take much notice.

They do some checks before you even get there, so by booking onto the ferry they can flag your details if they want you to be checked.

You haven't been on the tunnel before have you? I do regularly with a multitude of friends and family of different ethnicities and it bears no difference- no passport checks ever. Everyone gets waved on. On the way back it's a little more so but not much. More so when bringing pets then people.

And I have wondered about a disgruntled parent stealing their child from the other.

I went straight through passport control with my cousins dd when flying to majorca 11 years ago. I even said to the man "oh I haven't got her passport her mum has" meaning to wait for them to catch us up. He just said "yea ok" and waved us through

I travelled ferry Dublin to Hollyhead, drove to Folkestone, chunnel to Calais and drove across the Swiss and Italian borders. Only had passports checked coming BACK into Ireland from Hollyhead on the return journey. With an 8 year old DD in the car. Nobody gave a shit..

I have had liquids in my bag whilst going through security at an airport, I said to the man that I just needed to sort out my bag and throw away the liquids, the man said "don't worry you don't need to get rid of them, we aren't worried about girls like you" firstly I objected to being called a girl as I'm closer to middle age than I an girlhood and secondly that I was waved through because I don't look like a terrorist.

On the other hand my mum is late 40s, she looks middle class and has quite a posh accent, she's often traveling with my younger siblings who are children and she always gets stopped and searched at customs. What is more shocking to me is my mum lets my siblings come and met me in arrivals alone so I see my 7/8 year old siblings coming out saying mum is being searched again you'd think letting random children leave is a risk, what if I wasn't there? What if my mum was a drug mule and the children were in arrivals one whilst my mum was in prison!

I used to go cross channel once a month. In all my times I've been stopped twice. Once on the way back from Ranges training - which was amusing because my boot was full of filthy army kit that set off all the 'explosives' monitors so they had to check my stuff piece by piece to confirm I wasn't carrying a bomb. The second time I was just married so there was confusion about my surname/ID Card/Passport (I'd stupidly booked my ticket in my married name, forgetting all my ID would still be in my maiden name).

I reckon I've probably done 60/70 other journeys and never been stopped (including twice when I was actually breaking the law at the time ). Conversely, my dark skinned DH was almost always stopped, and has been body searched a few times. He hates crossing the channel.

Boring looking British middle class family here. You would not believe how often we get pulled over for checks when doing the same. Then the list of questions - why are we travelling? Err, holiday? Is a British family travelling by car from a UK ferry port on holiday suspicious?

DH is convinced its me. When travelling on my own, I am always the one who will have to take her shoes off at the airport while everyone is waved through, be searched, have my luggage searched, be questioned about why I'm carry some innocuous item. I even get followed in department stores by detectives.

I'm sure its do with quotas - they need to find the most innocuous British looking person possible, to balance the other checks. When it happens, which is often, its almost as if they purposefully do it in front of more varied travellers.

Come to think of it, it only happens in the UK. When I fly to the US and Canada, they couldn't be less interested in me.

Our son used to live in Southern Ireland and I was never asked for a passport crossing from the North to the South or back again. In my opinion going to France is exactly the same, it is just a border and I wish they would scrap the requirement to use a passport at all within Europe.

I know what you mean. I live behind parliament square and a few years ago there was a Tamil protest with many many Tamils present, thousands. The police were marching them backwards to trafalgar sq but we were going the opposite way, home. All we had to do was say to the police we wanted to get home and they let us through the barrier of police. I remember saying to DH they must be allowing this purely on the basis we're white! They didn't say a word but all
The brown people got kettled.

You don't need a passport to go back and forth between uk & Ireland. Airlines just like them as ID

Thanks everyone. At least I know what I experienced was 'normal'. I'm sure you'll all be very pleased couldn't care less to hear that I am back in the UK after a very stern British lady checked our passports throughly and eyed up the DCs when getting back on the shuttle.

I've been passport checked getting onto the ferry but we were unwisely getting the bus from London to Paris and apparently they concluded that the type of people who caught the hideous overnight bus were more likely to be in need of passport checks.

The other way, on the Eurostar, my DH (with his brand new spousal visa) was rather curtly asked who his wife was. I think the person was pressing for a quick response on a name (to prove genuineness, I don't know?), but DH turned round, pointed at me in the queue behind him, and said "her!" I grinned and waved as unthreateningly as I could...

I've got the Eurotunnel with a group of friends a couple of times a year for the last 10 years. Never checked on the way there, checked every time on the way back in.

YABU - Stealth Range Rover brag !

Don't worry, my son is definitely on the swarthy side, a true Celt, we always get pulled over (in our Mercedes) for a good looking at both ways just to check he belongs to me. You are obviously too bland to bother with.

My sister also drives a Range Rover & has three sons (& a husband) of not completely white heritage, they get pulled over too when they go through the tunnel for a thorough inspection.

Fear not! Your passport money is not wasted, they always check the darkies irrespective of the car they drive. No need to to bemoan your wasted passports you pink cheeked lovely.