The government of The Bahamas and IOM are today inaugurating a
travel document and fraud detection laboratory, the second of its
kind in the Caribbean region, at the Lynden Pindling International
Airport in Nassau.

The new lab, which is part of an IOM regional border management
and enhanced security project that includes the Dominican Republic,
is equipped with the latest technology in travel document
inspection. It will allow immigration officials to detect
fraudulent documents and impostors, thus drastically reducing the
number of people travelling with documents that appear legitimate
but are in fact fake or legitimate documents that do not belong to
the holder.

Other equipment includes decoders, an e-passport reader,
software, scanners, video and photo cameras, microscopes,
computers, and printers.

As part of the regional project funded by the US State
Department Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (WHA), IOM has
provided training over the past three years to officers from The
Bahamas Immigration Department, the Royal Bahamas Police Force,
Bahamas Customs, and the Royal Bahamas Defense Force on subjects
including document inspection and impostor detection, customer
service, ethics, communication and human rights of migrants.

The Bahamas, as an archipelagic nation with a total land mass of
5,400 square miles spread out over an area of 100,000 square miles
of ocean, faces a daunting challenge in managing migration and
securing its borders.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs T. Bent
Symonette, Director of the Immigration Department Jack Thompson and
Richard E. Scott, IOM Regional Representative for North America and
the Caribbean, are attending the inauguration ceremony.

Funding from the WHA also allowed for a laboratory to be
established by IOM in Trinidad and Tobago in 2007.

For more information, please contact:

Frantz Celestin

IOM Washington

Tel: 1.202.862.1826, Ext. 233

E-mail: "mailto:fcelestin@iom.int">fcelestin@iom.int