One of the things we love about traveling through Singapore is that you can transit within Chanai Airport without going through customs. This contrasts with the pain of having to get visas and go through customs when we travel through China.
It is therefore upsetting to read the following in the NZ Herald this morning....
Passengers transitting in NZ to require visas
3:43PM Wednesday March 26, 2008
The Government is changing the rules for passengers in transit through New Zealand.
Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove says as of Friday, transit visas will be needed for all people travelling via New Zealand, unless they are specifically exempted by immigration policy.
He says the change is due to increased security requirements and changing travel patterns.
Mr Cosgrove says the new policy will strengthen risk management and future proof border control.
This of course will necessitate more customs officials, make lines longer at customs and move NZ further away from being a civilized, non-paranoid country like Singapore and into the camp of over-the-top, security obsessed, government-with-its-beak-into-everything countries like the US and China. Of course we can expect nothing else from a government that is making Rob Muldoon look decidedly non-interventionist.
2 comments:
Hmmm Sym - saying that singapore hasn't got its beak into everything is a stretch - the government owns most of the apartments people live in, which have apartment wardens. There are fines for spitting, littering etc. If you are a philipino immigrant worker you have to go through compulsory sterilisations. Singapore may have pretty open borders, but it isn't "non-interventionalist" at all.
Hmmm... compulsory sterilization's based on race... sounds a bit OTT.
I am sure Singapore has its faults. But from an NZers point of view, they do everything they can to not cause you grief.
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