Feds To Invest $2.7 Billion on The Fingerprinting of International Visitors That Are Exiting Country
The Bush administration would require commercial airlines and cruise-line operators to collect information such as fingerprints from international travelers and send the information to the Homeland Security Department soon after the travelers leave the country, according to a proposed rule.
It seems the Bush administration is finally filling in the void that was found after 9/11. This will be heavily opposed by many Americans, as most of the expenses will trickle down into the wallets of business and consumer taxpayers alike. They are going to need biometric scanners and even more personnel to operate the fingerprint scanners. Lines at airports and the security checks will be even more bogged down.
Many people don’t realize they already do this for people entering the country. The entry fingerprinting system is known as US-VISIT. The primary reason the Feds do this is to take the data and use it to match your identity against the data captured by the State Department at the time the visa was issued to ensure that you are the same person who received the visa. This process helps reduce fraud, identity theft, and the risk that terrorists and criminals will enter the U.S. undetected or by using stolen or fraudulent documents.
This program would be executing the exit portion of the process, which would ensure even more safety. Currently the exit process only requires the I-94 document received upon arrival to be given to an airline or ship representative before leaving. A fingerprinting process would ensure the person leaving is the same person who entered.
In the end America will benefit the proposed plan. The current financial situations of America might make it difficult to execute at any sense of full efficiency for quite some time. There will most likely be major hiccups and issues. But the exit process of international visitors has been a security problem for a very long time, and closing the security flaw would result in lesser odds of another 9/11 attack.
