World

Visa holders will have to say 'cheese'

US security clamp putting spotlight on visitors arriving at 115 airports

January 06, 2004 Edition -1

Sapa-AFP

Washington - The US government has begun fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors arriving at 115 US airports as part of a multi-million-dollar effort to track down terrorists.

Photos and fingerprints are required only of visitors with visas - an expected 23-million arrivals this year.

Citizens from 27 countries, mostly in Europe, who enter for tourism or business for short periods without a visa are exempt, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, or US-Visit.

The procedures in place, officially launched yesterday by Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge in Atlanta, Georgia, comprise phase one of US-Visit, a $380-million (about R2,5-billion) effort to track down terrorists.

By next year every port of entry on land, sea and air will have the photographic and fingerprinting technology.

All US visas and passports will eventually include photos and fingerprints - called "biometric identifiers".

The programme comes after the US raised its terror alert to its next-to-highest level last month. Intelligence indicated that al-Qaeda was planning to hijack airliners for a repeat of the September 11 attacks, in which 3 000 people were killed.

The United States has placed armed police on some airliners and is requiring foreign airliners in US airspace to do the same.

Inkless fingerprints and digital photos will add 10 to 15 seconds to the entry interview, which now takes between 60 and 90 seconds, Kimberly Weissman, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said yesterday.

"We will be monitoring (this) to be sure it doesn't add to wait times," she said.

If it causes backups, it will be up to each of the 115 US international airports to solve.

"We've been supporting this change. We think it's a cleaner process," said Ralph Tragale, a spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the Newark and John F Kennedy international airports and owned the World Trade Center, destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

Those attacks accelerated US plans already in the pipeline to revamp its system of tracking immigrants, after it was discovered that some of the hijackers entered the US legally but overstayed their visas. Until now, there has been no way of knowing when visitors left and whether they left legally.

To that end, US-Visit will set up self-service kiosks at all US airports. There, visitors will "check out" of the country before stepping on a plane.

Two September 11 hijackers entered as students but never went to class. US-Visit will close that loophole by notifying schools that their students have landed.

However, civil libertarians and immigrants said the biometric identification system may be an invasion of privacy.

"It doesn't seem likely that we're going to catch any bad guys through this programme, but it is likely a lot of immigrants are going to get caught up in the bureaucracy," Michele Waslin, a spokesperson for La Raza, an advocacy group for US Latinos, said.

"It does appear to be a step toward creating a national registry," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty programme. "It is a tool for creating a surveillance society."

France and Germany are already planning to fingerprint visa applicants. And on Saturday, Brazil began fingerprinting and photographing all US citizens entering the country. - Sapa-AFP