I arrived in Auckland. The immigration officer (actually it is now done by customs staff on immigration’s behalf), looked at my arrival form and noticed that I had been to Sudan. He wrote a capital “T” on it and circled it. After collecting my luggage, I was intercepted by another officer and sent to another area where I waited for someone to become free.
I was interviewed (interrogated?) at the counter for some time in detail about what I had done, who I had met, where I had been etc during my travels. When I said I went diving in Sudan, there was a look of disbelief on their face. Perhaps they don’t know that people go snow-skiing in Tehran and Beirut as well. Anyway, it was quite detailed and I often had to spell out the place names for them.
Next, I was asked to put my luggage on a large table. I went through more or less the same questions with a second officer there. She then looked through my luggage in detail while asking more probing questions about this trip, my work, my life and my previous travel.
Finally, they took away my laptop, tablet and smartphone to be scanned.
At the end, she said she’d write a report with a conclusion that I’m of low risk. This would be attached to my profile and I shouldn’t have any issues in the future. Hopefully that’s true!
At no point did I feel that I was in trouble because I have done nothing wrong. They were very professional and it was a more professional version of “tell me about your holiday”. The biggest hassle was for Kim who had been working all night, and Margaret who had offered to pick us up. They both had to put up with my 2 hour delay.