New US fingerprint rules for foreigners faces bitter battle
Airlines and cruise ship companies will fight a protracted battle with US security officials over a proposed plan to fingerprint foreign nationals as they enter this country.
One major reason: a cost approaching $3 billion, according to supposedly conservative estimates by the federal government.
US government agents currently collect visitors’ fingerprints as they enter this country. It was long expected that government agents — and not private sector employees — would collect the fingerprints when the program expands to include people leaving the country.
But the latest proposal delegates the fingerprinting job to the airlines and cruise lines, which would be required to submit the prints and travel information to the government within 24 hours.
“The proposal sparked immediate opposition by the airlines and privacy groups,†reported CNN.
Both groups said the government was “outsourcing” security, and the airlines raised the specter that the change would lead to long lines at airport counters.
“This is a border security issue. Why would they turn it over to the private sector?” said Melissa Ngo of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy group.
Airlines have “spent the last four years using technology to respond to travelers’ desire for self-service,” said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association, which represents some 240 US and international airlines.
“Sending passengers back into counter queues is a big step backward,” he said.
The proposal is the latest installment in the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT program, a post-September 11 program designed to keep track of visitors to the United States. The 9/11 Commission called for the program, and Congress has endorsed it.
Under US-VISIT, homeland security agents fingerprint foreign nationals entering the United States at all air, land and sea borders. And DHS is under a June 2009 congressional deadline to fingerprint visitors departing the U.S.
A Homeland Security official estimates the operational costs for the airline and cruise ship industries would be $2.7 billion over 10 years and says the government would pay part of those costs. But specifics were not immediately available.
The DHS official says that pilot programs indicated it would cost even more to have the government collect the fingerprints, because the airlines already have infrastructure in place to process departing passengers.
Nearly 100 million non-U.S. citizens arriving in the United States have provided digital photographs or fingerprints to airline officials since 2004.
“We have to decide who is going to win this fight,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. “Is it going to be the airline industry or is it going to be the people who believe we should know who leaves the country by air?”
The aviation industry and others will have 60 days to comment on the proposed rule before it is finalized.
by: David Wilkening
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