By BenS - 5 Jul 18 8:16 AM
I apologise if this is somewhat repetitive, as there are many questions like this but each person's situation is slightly different.
I am on the SOR and travel abroad about 5 times a year for both work and holiday.
When I travel to Europe, I routinely get stopped and asked questions on arrival in the foreign country. I assume this is because I have a Schengen Information System alert on me, presumably added when I notified the UK police of my foreign travel.
I have also travelled outside of Europe while on the SOR, to Canada, Mexico, Kenya and Thailand. I of course notified all these visits. For Canada I was economical with the truth on the eTA question about convictions, if you get my drift. In all 4 countries, I had absolutely no problem passing through border control. No questions at all - fill in a simple form on the plane or on a machine upon arrival, and they check/stamp your passport and wave you through quickly.
This surprised me, as the police obviously inform the Europeans about me travelling there, but not the other countries. So I guess they have used their discretion not to issue an Interpol green notice. Thailand might pop up as a suspicious place for an RSO, but it was for a friend's wedding in a rarely visited rural area, far from the infamous tourist areas etc.
The fact that they clearly don't bother to notify the non-European countries of my travel suggests that they have discretion regarding Interpol green notices, but no discretion for the SIS and are required to add any RSO who notifies travel to Europe. Is this correct?
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By AB2014 - 5 Jul 18 12:35 PM
+x+x+xThank you very much for your response. I often wonder what the point is of these discreet checks for EU citizens travelling to other EU countries, to which they cannot be denied entry except in extraordinarily rare circumstances (the mere existence of a criminal conviction is not grounds for deny an EU citizen entry to another EU country - even a convicted murderer won an appeal against being illegally denied residence in another EU country on the basis of his conviction). So if they know they have to let you in anyway, what on earth will they glean from asking where you came from (which they must surely know anyway) and who you're travelling with? It would take a brave RSO to notify and travel to the US! I would only do so if I were a dual US citizen and so knew I couldn't be denied entry, or something like that. There's a news article about an RSO who successfully travelled to the US for a holiday without notifying (as he feared he would never be allowed to go if he notified), but upon returning to the UK, his passport flagged and he was arrested and jailed for failing to notify foreign travel. While illegal, I can't say I blame him for trying. I would have travelled back to Ireland, which has not yet implemented SIS, and then travelled to the UK from there, so as not to have to pass through UK passport control. Not that I would encourage this of course ;-) I hate to be negative, but the Ireland option might expire in March 2019....  Let's see what this Friday's cabinet offsite brings 
+x+x+xThank you very much for your response. I often wonder what the point is of these discreet checks for EU citizens travelling to other EU countries, to which they cannot be denied entry except in extraordinarily rare circumstances (the mere existence of a criminal conviction is not grounds for deny an EU citizen entry to another EU country - even a convicted murderer won an appeal against being illegally denied residence in another EU country on the basis of his conviction). So if they know they have to let you in anyway, what on earth will they glean from asking where you came from (which they must surely know anyway) and who you're travelling with? It would take a brave RSO to notify and travel to the US! I would only do so if I were a dual US citizen and so knew I couldn't be denied entry, or something like that. There's a news article about an RSO who successfully travelled to the US for a holiday without notifying (as he feared he would never be allowed to go if he notified), but upon returning to the UK, his passport flagged and he was arrested and jailed for failing to notify foreign travel. While illegal, I can't say I blame him for trying. I would have travelled back to Ireland, which has not yet implemented SIS, and then travelled to the UK from there, so as not to have to pass through UK passport control. Not that I would encourage this of course ;-) I hate to be negative, but the Ireland option might expire in March 2019.... Let's see what this Friday's cabinet offsite brings
We can always hope. 🤞🏻
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