amNewYork

Say 'Cheese'

Visitors to the U.S. will be photographed and fingerprinted

January 6, 2004
By Michael Clancy

Foreigners arriving on U.S. soil were digitally fingerprinted and photographed yesterday as part of a new measure to secure the nation and its borders.

As a new Osama bin Laden recording has surfaced and international flights have been canceled due to terrorist threats, federal officials unveiled the program to instantly check visitors against terrorist watch lists at ports of entry.

"It's part of a comprehensive program to ensure that our borders remain open to visitors and closed to terrorists," said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

Called US-VISIT, or U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, the program was implemented in 115 airports, including Kennedy and Newark international airports. Fourteen major seaports will also have the program which takes an ink-less fingerprint of both index fingers and a digital photo to create a database of foreigners.

It applies to foreigners, except people from 27 countries, mainly in Europe, who can travel to the U.S. for less than 90 days without visas. More than 24 million people are expected to be registered each year.

The process will take 15 seconds once screeners become proficient.

Travelers gave it mixed reviews.

"We all want to go on a flight knowing we're going to arrive safely," said Layal Rashid, a 22-year-old Cypress resident arriving on a flight from Frankfurt, Germany.

But Carlos Elizondo, arriving from Monterrey, Mexico, said, "We're not used to having our fingerprints and photos taken and it being filed. Who knows what they can do with that?"

The information will be secure and made available on a need-to-know basis, according to Homeland Security. The photographs of visa holders will be part of a searchable database.

Biometrics, which scans physical characteristics that are unique to each person, will make it tougher for terrorists to use fake documents.

A Congressional appropriation of $380 million will pay for the program this year. By the end of next year, a similar program will be instituted in 50 land border crossings.

Biometric safeguards will become even more prevalent in the next few years, said Trevor Prout, of the International Biometric Group, a Manhattan-based consulting firm that works with Homeland Security.

"What they have implemented is just the first of the technologies we will see in 2004, 2005, 2006," Prout told amNewYork. "They just issued the request-for-proposals for US-VISIT in the last few months and the systems could change."