Business Mobility Group - Key Initiatives

Standards: A key to building capacity

The level and quality of immigration services across the APEC region is subject to ever-increasing scrutiny by business. Business needs transparent, predictable, and simple immigration practices to take advantage of trade and investment opportunities. For these reasons, the APEC Business Mobility Group (BMG) is actively pursuing a program to build the capacity of member economies to develop and implement standards across a range of immigration services. In 2001the BMG approved their seminal standards document, titled Standards: A Key to Building Capacity. This document contains the basic set of agreed standards related to the key immigration areas of Pre-Arrival, Entry, Stay and Departure. The BMG has built upon this framework to develop standards in specific areas such as Temporary Business Entry, Document Examination and Fraud Detection, and Professional Service. These standards become a basis for establishing capacity building programs to assist economies in the implementation of the mutually agreed standards.

Temporary Business Entry

Economies first applied the standards methodology to their individual regulatory regimes that govern Short Term Business Visits and Business Temporary Residence. These standards have been endorsed by economies as agreed collective actions in Chapter 13 of the Osaka Action Agenda. With respect to Short Term Business Visits economies have collectively agreed to:

Streamline short-term entry requirements for business people. APEC economies will strive on a best endeavours basis and according to their own immigration procedures to implement one or more of the following options:

i) visa free or visa waiver arrangements;
ii) participating in the APEC Business Travel Card scheme;
iv) at least 3 year multiple entry visas. For Temporary Business Residence arrangements economies have collectively agreed to:

Implement streamlined temporary residence processing arrangements for the intra-company transfer of senior managers and executives, and specialists as defined by individual economies.

In 2005, the BMG agreed on an APEC-funded project to engage a consultant to review economies’ public information on temporary business entry and stay requirements and procedures. In 2006, the BMG considered and agreed on actions to address the findings of the review report, to improve standards in the provision of information.

Document Examination and Fraud Detection

The BMG completed a successful APEC-wide program to build the capacity of economies to detect travel document fraud. Fraud costs governments, communities and business significant resources, and effective fraud detection regimes give economies the confidence to adopt more streamlined and generous business entry arrangements.

As part of the program, the BMG has provided comprehensive regional training for Immigration agencies located in all APEC economies to implement the standards for the detection of fraudulent travel documents, with immediate and long term benefits for business and other travellers across the region. You can read more about the Document Examination and Fraud Detection program here.

Professional Service Standards

In 2002, the BMG commenced a project to develop and implement standards to deliver higher levels of professional immigration service across the region. At the first workshop in Merida, Mexico, in May 2002, economies developed a standards document that was endorsed by BMG member economies at their August 2002 meeting. The Professional Service standards document is available here.

In the current phase of the project economies are developing individual action plans to bring their immigration regimes in line with the agreed standards. These action plans include training programs for staff in code of conduct and ethics. There is also a significant amount of work by economies to reduce corruption and misconduct and improve professional services to ensure document security.

Travel Document Security

The aim of this project is to develop standards and build capacity in Travel Document Security. The BMG has already agreed on standards in document security based on current global practices for passport and travel document security, including the latest developments in biometrics and other technologies. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has set the international security standards for Passports and has set 2010 as the date when all passports will be Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTDs). The BMG has agreed that all APEC economies will begin issuing MRTDs, if possible with biometrics by 2008.

Currently, the BMG is working toward all APEC economies using biometric data in their MRTDs. Consultation and education on biometrics, international standards, e-passport technology and security was undertaking via capacity building workshops in 2006 and work to produce a reference document on the implementation of biometrics MRTDs and related border systems is being undertaken in 2007.