I was made to wait for “referral” on trying to enter New Zealand with my nine year old son. The immigration officer became quite flustered and aggressive when I asked him to clarify what he meant. My wife and our two other sons were let through the adjacent checkpoint at the same time and were not allowed to wait near us. We had been asked to go through adjacent checkpoints to save time. Much to my wife’s concern they were then ushered away through the doors beyond.
In those days, children did not hold their own passport documents, their names had to be added to that of their parents. We were perfectly legal in that respect, both my wife and I had all three offspring on both of our passports and had travelled fairly widely as a family.
Eventually, we were led away by “heavies”, to a side office. My passport was scrutinised again by men in suits and after some delay and phone calls being made I was asked to confirm which one of us was which. Judging from the dates of birth and my photo in the passport it was quite obvious. After another phone call we were then let go without any forthcoming explanation. On leaving NZ a similar thing occurred at the outbound security desk. I asked what was going on and was told that there was an “asterisk” against my details on their computer. No further information was given and after a few minutes and phone calls we were allowed through.
On getting home I did some research. The only thing I could find was that someone with the same name as my nine year old was wanted for multiple murders.