Migrations violated biometric passport system and risked visa-free entry to Europe

The delay in attention in migration and the lack of passports was a major crisis, which would have been solved by acquiring more passports. However, it would now turn out that the entity had violated its own system for issuing biometric passports to obtain 10,000 notebooks borrowed from the Ministry of Standard Relations.

On Monday, April 11, the migration office at Jorge Chavez Airport collapsed. It was reported that the system used by this entity to issue documents collapsed for several hours, harming people who already had scheduled flights.

At all times, Jorge Fernández Campos, superintendent, denied that there was a shortage of passports. But a document sent to the Chancellery would prove quite the opposite.

APPLY FOR LOAN

First, according to a Panorama report, on April 18, the head of the Office of Information and Communications Technology, Eduardo Roncal, issued a letter that contradicted this version.

“(...) we inform that all information systems including the Electronic Passport Issuance System (...) on Monday, April 11, 2022 from 00:00 a.m. until the mission of this report, they have always been available, without any incident, technical failure or availability of the computer service at the headquarters, Jorge Chavez international airport and all the headquarters nationwide”, read in the same.

However, what would have happened is that, given the possibility of a shortage of passports, Jorge Fernández Campos would have requested to borrow 10,000 notebooks from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A day earlier, he had stated that there were notebooks in Migrations.

“(...) I respectfully request that your office be good enough to provide, as a loan and as a measure of institutional support to ensure the continuity of the electronic passport issuance service, a total of ten thousand passport books”, it reads.

The problem with this request is that the codes of the passbooks that arrive at the Chancellery cannot be used for Migration. They are issued by the same company, but they are already coded in a way that has never been asked for passports from the Chancellery since Migrations.

“Each passport has security and control mechanisms that are managed by the systems of both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migration. They are totally different systems. So, when orders or tenders are placed, they have to meet the requirements for the systems of each one, of each institution,” said Glyzs Quino, former Head of Migration.

In addition, Fernández Campos applied for the loan stating that he had already carried out printing tests with the Foreign Ministry's notebooks. He said the results were “successful”. However, the results were not entirely that way. Jorge Gibbons, immigration advisor, said that some passports “ran well”, but others did not.

In order to get the Chancellery booklets into the system, they would have violated their own procedure. Both entities have completely different systems, so it is not possible that the notebooks have been accepted.

The same thing seemed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which responded on April 13. They noted that the observers of their entity who were present in the test concluded that: “the standard procedure for issuing biometric passports in migration was violated”.

In this way, the loan was not made. In addition, Migraciones stated that there are no longer problems of lack of stock, as 80,000 notebooks arrived in April.

VISA-FREE ENTRY TO EUROPE WAS PUT AT RISK

The fact that Migrations had violated its procedure for issuing passports, would have affected the international perception of the security of the document. In that sense, Peruvians could have been affected by their entry to Europe without a visa.

“They give us the 'go' to enter Europe without a visa. So, since we don't have all the security measures, this obviously represents a danger that Europe may discuss the issue of withdrawing our trust within our document,” said Glyzs Quino.

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