3) to be able to search/detain people without cause
I've yet to see a border that I liked. In plenty of countries this now extends to a certain distance away from the border (sometimes surprisingly large), even when you are not actively crossing or have not crossed.
Bizarrely enough at the Chinese border they only cared that the paperwork is in order. The last few times I went, everyone passed by the giant customs X-ray without even filling out a nothing-to-declare form. China's border crossing inspection for foreigners is far less invasive than the US's for citizens.
True, Chinese border control is way less intrusive. It has to be said though that China handles foreign policy differently, so the number of groups attempting terrorist attacks is comparatively low.
I'm not sure about the US, but they do have scanners in the subway and in train stations, but the scanning they do is lackluster at best. They did however once find a 6 inch knife in my bag (i forgot it in there) on my return trip from Wangfujing. If I truly wanted to get it across, I could have just hidden it in a pocket, as there are no metal detectors in the subway. I assume the xrays are simply there to detect larger, bag based bombs or to convince foreigners that there is actually security.
Assuming from your profile that, like myself, you live in the Netherlands, I'm pretty sure you have no objections to our land borders... Of course, yo have to pay attention to actually notice those as you cross them.
My point is, those borders are still very real, they have great social, cultural, legal and economic significance, yet they don't serve any of those three purposes.
Note that in the US, we have strict stop everyone controls at the border (with Canada no less, this isn't just a Mexican border thing), at which you need to show your passport, and we have mobile border controls up to 100 miles within the border.
I used to live near a place where they frequently put the "mobile" control on an interstate in Vermont about 80 miles from the border, so I got stopped by it a lot.
Of course, I've always wondered about how useful the mobile controls are, other than for getting people used to a police state. They are not allowed to ask any US citizens for passports or proof of US citizenship; so they always ask "is everyone in this car a US citizen" and then wave you on if you say yes. When my friend, who is Malaysian, answered "no, I'm not a US citizen", they thought based on his excellent American English accent that he was joking and waved him on anyhow.
And if you're a dirty foreigner you have to have your Iris scanned, a picture taken and your fingerprints taken.
I've lived on the US/Canadian border and if they make a flip-book of all the pictures they took of me over the years it would make for a neat animated study in aging.
Really? As a Canadian who crosses that border fairly regularly, the iris & fingerprint records are only for the "Enhanced Drivers License" as far as I knew, I've crossed the border dozens of times with just my passport
Note also that people who are in this country illegally may have come here legally, and then simply stayed beyond the point that they were allowed to. That has nothing to do with border patrols, but rather whether we feel it's appropriate to aggressively police inside the country for people who may have overstayed the amount of time they were supposed to.
I spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina through 17 countries with my Jeep. The border that gave me the most trouble? Coming into the US in Washington (off the ferry from Victoria, Canada)
Also, see "Long Way Round" where Ewan and Charlie ride motorbikes from London to NYC, "around" the earth. Which border gave them the most problems? You guessed it.
I walked across the border from Vietnam to Laos, and accidentally walked the wrong way. Ended up walking straight into Laos, so we had to go all the way back and find the correct way.
At lest in Germany the police still uses them to justify random searches. I haven’t been affected by that since I’m quite white (even though I live in one of those zones where the police can more easily search me). In the train and train stations police seems always laser-focused on inconveniencing brown and other strange looking people. They are masters at racial profiling.
For white people those open borders are quite nice and quite open in every sense of the word. The outside borders of the EU are for aggressively and inhumanly keeping people out.
Ok, if you are young, alone and in a train from the Netherlands to Germany (or in similar suspicious places) you might get searched for drugs but that’s about it. And even then those searches are quite random and don’t happen very often.
But the rampant racial profiling sucks. (One example of why that is the case and obviously unfair: I can be lazy and late and show up at the train station three minutes before my train leaves. I do that regularly. No problem practically every time. The police never once in my life stopped me. And whenever I did see them stop someone in the train station those people had one thing in common: they were not white. If I were brown I would have to think twice about arriving so late and hope that the police doesn’t see me.)
"white" people are stopped as well, albeit most likely not as often. I have a friend who's more German than the Bundestag, who was once stopped and screened randombly by a customs official whilst he was running to catch his bus. Tough luck.
Yeah, it’s possible, obviously. Especially if you are young and alone and look a certain way – but the way the German police does racial profiling is very obvious. And since I’m white and apparently look harmless to the police they just completely ignore me. I just don’t really have to worry about this. Ok, maybe the police will stop me the next time I’m in a train station and I will miss my train – but who cares? That would still be a very rare event for me. In practice I don’t even have to think about it. Something I’m pretty sure wouldn’t be the case if I looked differently.
During the last 25 years of my life I had exactly two run-ins with the police, one traffic stop (all I had to say that I didn’t drink any alcohol and they let me drive on – I didn’t even have to leave the car) and one time I was jaywalking (the police was hiding right at the pedestrian crossing, I had to pay a €5 fine).
The police are not allowed to only check people that meet a certain racial pattern, so they usually add some white people in the mix just to give the appearance of randomness.
Mind you, though, I find that the security checks at a German aiport are heaps more comfortable and relaxed than anything I've experienced at any American aiport I've been.
Between a Schengen country and a non-Schengen country?
What kind?
On an airfield, a shipping port or a land border?
How are you moving?
With a vehicle or just you?
Who are you?
A Citizen of a Schengen country?
A Citizen of the EU?
A Citizen of the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia or New-Zealand?
A Citizen of another country?
What do you look like?
All have different rules governing what border patrols can/may/must do and the other variables determine what you're up against depending on the can/may bit. Hard to know your rights (sometimes the guards don't even know...), and your obligations.
Amongst what you could encounter:
- fixed stop-all checks
- mobile checks
- abandoned borders
- randomly manned borders
- nothing at all
EU border strategy is pretty messy. Even on the outside borders of the EU it is very much dependent on where you are what you'll encounter.
Some borders are so porous they might as well not exist, others are so locked up that even though technically cross border traffic is open in practice it's just like it was before or worse.
If you want to know about borders in the EU: become a trucker for a few years.
I remember cycling across the border from France to Italy once. Just a deserted alpine road, it was beautiful...
Also, come to think of it, the sleeper train from Paris to Munich last summer didn't ask me for any ID at all...
The time we drove from Croatia to Italy was a different story though (come to think of it, that was before it joined the EU a month ago, so probably not relevant.)
As an example of a really porous border, the German/Swiss border. I used to live right at it (there are 3 bridges in my town leading into switzerland). There's one which you can only walk/bike over which used to have a border control which is now deserted. The other 2 ones have border controls, but they seem to be solely tasked with checking whether cars are allowed to drive in switzerland (road fees), whether swiss people are buying more stuff in Germany than they're allowed to (the price differences are immense, so we've got people comming from as far as Zurich to shop here), and sales tax refunds (Swiss people buying in Germany don't have to pay the Mehrwertsteuer of 19%, but the significantly lower Swiss sales tax. As the MwS. is factored into the purchase price, it's centrally refunded at the border).
It's more of a tollbooth/administrativa affair, really.
There are no borders. You just drive along and next thing you'll get is a text message that you are in a different country informing you about roaming prices for your cell phone.
If you happen to use a navigation system, it might say something like "Welcome to Italy". But that's it.
However, if you do Ireland -> UK -> EU, you'll most likely only see passport control between UK & EU.
Passport controls aren't technically necessary between the UK & Ireland, but few airports in Ireland are architected to treat ingress differently. (I suspect in at least one case, they've actually gone backwards, as the domestic channel was repurposed for the US "ingress before you fly" method.)
If you do the same trip in reverse, you're less likely to see passport controls entering the UK, as most larger airports are architected around domestic & International travel - Irish flights are usually landed as domestic.
1) to keep people out
2) to keep people in
3) to be able to search/detain people without cause
I've yet to see a border that I liked. In plenty of countries this now extends to a certain distance away from the border (sometimes surprisingly large), even when you are not actively crossing or have not crossed.