Finger-printing of America-bound passengers holding US visas is expected to begin today at airports around the world, including Dublin and Shannon, as part of an aggressive new US approach to identify and track violators of immigration controls and suspected terrorists, writes Conor O'Clery in New York
Travellers will have their photographs taken and fingerprints digitally scanned by immigration officials as part of a new passenger profile system which will affect all US-bound ticket holders, except US citizens and people travelling under the visa waiver scheme.
Some 28 countries in the visa waiver system, including Ireland and the UK, are exempt for the present from the new system, known as US Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology (USVISIT). It does, however, apply to all travellers requiring travel documents, according to Mr Asa Hutchinson, Under Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security. Irish workers, journalists and academics in the US who do not hold green cards require visas for a prolonged stay in the United States.
The official said that the US hoped eventually to require passport holders from visa waiver countries to "contain a biometric component - fingerprint, facial identification, iris scan".
Currently "there is no way of knowing when or even if our visitors leave, but under the USVISIT that will change," Mr Hutchinson told a recent press conference in Washington to introduce the scheme.
By the end of 2004, self-service kiosks at US airports will enable visa-holding travellers to scan their documents at departure terminals and provide their fingerprints themselves to indicate they have left the country. Currently there is no comprehensive system to check departure dates.
The fingerprinting of US visa holders will take place in foreign airports where ticket-holders for US flights pass through US immigration, such as Dublin and Shannon, but otherwise it will be done at the 115 airports in the US with international arrival terminals.
The procedure is expected to add only 10-15 seconds to the immigration process, the US Department of Homeland Security said.
The technology used consists of a small inkless box that digitally scans fingerprints and a spherical computer camera that simultaneously snaps pictures, similar to that used to take images of boarding passengers at UK airports.
"The visitor will be asked to put one and then the other index finger on a glass plate that will electronically capture two fingerprints," according to the US State Department website.
The decision to fingerprint foreign passengers arriving in the US has caused outrage in some countries. American travellers to Brazil are already being fingerprinted in retaliation.