Illegal Immigrants: Strengthening Border-Security at All Levels

The uncontrollable influx of aliens into Liberia may just be too alarming to attract the attention of immigration authorities in the country.

Interestingly, hundreds of them, currently in the country, may have entered illegally either through unmanned border points or other means at official ports of entry. 

Perhaps, as result of the scaring situation, the Bureau of Immigration and naturalization or BIN, on Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism on Capitol Hill, thought to go public with news of such huge influx of illegal immigrants.

The BIN, indeed, confirmed that aliens were entering Liberia without proper traveling documents, warning that illegal entry into the country was not tolerated.

It threatened to arrest and penalize anyone or group of immigrants caught by-passing the country’s official border points.

At a recent retreat in Monrovia intended for self-examination, the BIN identified the foregoing as one of its serious challenges and derived a number of strategies aimed at curtailing the huge influx of  aliens, especially from and through neighboring Mano River Union countries- among them, the effective monitoring of every border and check point to ensure that Liberia is free from border conflict.

According to the Bureau, the purpose of the exercise is track and identify anyone trying to enter the country illegally through either of the 176 border potholes.

The Bureau has already begun confidence building meetings with its counterparts along the Liberia-Sierra Leone borders to share vital information and will continue similar visits to other MRU countries.

Though such self-realization and reexamination may be far belated and long over-due, we think if authorities of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization and other security apparatus concerned with border-control actually mean well to deal with illegal immigrants, it is not too difficult for such job.

This means, there must be proper coordination and respect among assigned border security personnel and those at the various checkpoints; effective and efficient communication facilities, as well as adequate logistics, including vehicles for joint security patrols and housing.

The issue of salaries, allowances and other benefits for these personnel manning our borders and internal checkpoints must also be serious factored into such capacity-building.

The essence of the foregoing measures to strengthen our border security is to discourage bribery and other threats- and this is something that the government must consider seriously or else, our nation will continue to experience the worst influx of aliens and crimes of all sort.