Template talk:Border protection agencies
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Reviewing this template
[edit]This template has become something of a behemoth recently: the intention is good but it's got to the point where it has become a list in navbox format, can only display the majority of articles as abbreviations, and is of very little value as a navbox. I think one of the main problems is that it includes any time of government agency with border-related responsibilities - so for example, for the UK, HM Passport Office is listed despite the fact that this is an entirely back-office function that simply issues passports. I appreciate that every country seems to do things slightly differently, and as a result it is very hard to divide things up, but I think the current solution of including everything remotely really makes it unwieldy and of little value. I propose we instead try and divide up the border-related agencies accordingly:
- Taxes and duties
- Agencies responsible for enforcing taxes and duties at borders (Template:Customs services)
- Immigration law enforcement
- Agencies responsible for enforcing immigration law at borders (This template)
- Agencies responsible for enforcing immigration law away from borders (A new template, possibly the same as below)
- Immigration applications and passports
- Agencies responsible for administrating migration regulations (A new template, possibly the same as above)
- Maritime safety
- Agencies responsible for coordinating or providing maritime rescue (Template:Coast guards)
Thoughts? ninety:one 10:21, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
- Hi @Ninetyone:, you do raise valid concerns and suggestions, which I did consider too while expanding the navbox. I would like to add on to explain why I decided to expand the navbox instead of splitting them to different templates. Firstly, border protection has a lot of different aspects and roles along with the ones you did mention. They include, physical guarding of the border, immigration control (which includes passport and identity checks), border control (scanning of bags and goods), enforcement (which checks for over-stayers and illegal immigrants), visa management, passport issuing, foreign residency and migration affairs, health and quaratine. Customs services and coast guards already have their pre-existing templates, as you mentioned, and they are not included into this navbox as result. However if this navbox were to be split up into the approximately eight different navboxes, or grouped into different sub-categories, it would be tricky and many of the navboxes would have duplicating agencies. For example the Directorate General of Immigration (Indonesia) is only involved in immigration controls and migration related matters but is not involved in physically guarding the border. While others operate at certain locations or circumstances (day/night or peace/war time) in the country only, in the case of India where Bureau of Immigration (India) only operates in 37 of 86 checkpoints while other agencies like the Indo-Tibetan Border Police amongst the many other agencies operate the rest of the checkpoints, this is also on top of the other border protection roles that they carry out.
- Secondly, a combined navbox would allow someone to see what are the different agencies in a country that carry out border protection, if the navbox would to solely show only immigration control by country, for example, people may not be aware of the whole other different agencies that the country or other countries might operate.
- Thirdly, I have taken the Template:National intelligence agencies, Template:NATO Land Forces navboxes as a rough guideline in terms of the length and format and it does seem that these navboxes are big but not necessarily overwhelming. I am currently in the process of producing these articles as well to fill up the red links, which I feel would help make the navbox more appealing. If there could be changes, I was thinking more along the lines of adjusting the design, like making the countries' name clearer by bolding the name, etc. However, any other suggestions or opinion would be welcomed. Greateasterner (talk) 14:29, 19 August 2020 (UTC)