Y’All Come Back, You Hear?
Talk about hospitality. From now on tourists visiting the United States (with the exception of 28 mostly European nations where the people happen to mostly be Caucasian) are being fingerprinted and photographed upon arrival at the airport.
Called US-VISIT, or U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, the program will check an estimated 24 million foreigners each year, though some will be repeat visitors.
Inkless fingerprints will be taken and checked instantly against the national digital database for criminal backgrounds and any terrorist lists.
Homeland Security spokesman Bill Strassberger said that once screeners become proficient, the extra security will take only 10 to 15 seconds per person. Foreign travelers also will continue to pass through regular Customs points and answer questions.
Photographs will be used to help create a database for law enforcement. The travel data is supposed to be securely stored and made available only to authorized officials on a need-to-know basis.
A similar program is to be installed at 50 land border crossings by the end of next year, Strassberger said.
Brazil’s Foreign Ministry has requested that Brazilians be removed from the U.S. list, and police started fingerprinting and photographing Americans arriving at Sao Paulo’s airport last week in response to the new U.S. regulations.
“At first, most of the Americans were angered at having to go through all this, but they were usually more understanding once they learned that Brazilians are subjected to the same treatment in the U.S.,” Brazilian (news – web sites) police spokesman Wagner Castilho said last week.
The U.S. system consists of a small box that digitally scans fingerprints and a spherical computer camera. It will gradually replace a paper-based system that Congress ordered to be modernized following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
A person whose fingerprints or photos raise questions would not be turned away automatically. The visa holder would be sent to secondary inspection for further questions and checks. Officials have said false hits on the system have been less than 0.1 percent in trial runs.
Yes, we need to take security measures. But treating visitors like criminals is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The thing is, no other nation in the world subjects tourists to this kind of degrading treatment. Some of the most arduous countries to visit include the Russian Federation, which charges extravagant fees of up to $600 for a visa and whose customs officials like to relieve new arrivals of their cash and cameras, and the Central Asian republics like Turkmenistan, where you have to register with the former KGB every time you change hotels. But even these nasty trouble spots don’t fingerprint you.
Terrorism? Russia has been victimized by Chechen and other terrorists a hell of a lot more than we have. 9/11 doesn’t make us special, folks. All of these tourists are going to go back and tell their friends and family that the U.S. treats them like scum.
Still wonder why everyone hates us?
