People who come to Norway with a genuine passport belonging to someone else is a growing problem, warns National ID Center.
Traditionally, the issue in Norway has been people trying to get into the country with false identity documents, but in a report on foreigners’ abuse of ID documents last year, National ID Center presented this Wednesday a warning that increasing numbers of people are coming to Norway with real documents belonging to another person.
– An impostor, also called a ‘lookalike’ or ‘doppleganger’, is a term used for a person who pretends to be someone else,” says senior adviser Mads Jensen Odnes from the National ID Center to NRK.
One in Ten
The report reveals that last year, 44 cases were recorded where someone tried to get into Norway using another person’s papers. The year before the number reported was 55, but rhe National ID Center think they are missing a lot of information.
“The British held a survey two years ago in which they estimated that around 10,000 impostors broke through British airports each year, and they uncovered only 1,000,” says Jensen.
He believes the ratio in Norway holds. Thus, 500 people come to Norway annually by pretending to be someone else.
15 percent
A total of 653 immigrants found illegally in Norway last year where found with a total of 767unlawfully used ID documents. The year before that, there were 729 people with 866 documents.
Passports and national ID cards accounted for 59 percent of the documents in 2015 found to be abused. In both 2014 and 2015, Iraqi, Italian and Syrian documents made up the majority of the abused.
According to the EU border agency Frontex, up to 15 percent of those who come to Europe make use of another person’s identity papers.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
