WASHINGTON, 2 November — The counter-terrorism package signed by President Bush last week includes a little known proposal that could require foreigners to have identification cards to enter the United States.
This addition to the counter-terrorism bill escaped the attention of many in the media and apparently also many lawmakers. One reason why the proposal may have been overlooked is that it was included late in the legislation, just before the House and Senate give final approval to the overall bill.
Proposed by Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Missouri, the provision calls for a foreigner’s digitized fingerprint to be included on the identification card.
The new counter-terrorism law, which gives federal agents broad new police powers to probe terrorism, does not require Attorney General John Ashcroft to implement the identification-card system, but it urges him to do so and appropriates whatever money the Justice Department would need to put the cards into service.
The Senate bill also would direct the Immigration and Naturalization Service to upgrade its own electronic data system to include biometric data such as fingerprint verification or eye (iris) recognition on all foreign nationals applying to enter the United States.
"What our bill does is to implement the task force and airport aspect of the counter-terrorism bill, and to update it to include the latest technology such as fingerprints, voice recognition, palm prints, etc. It also calls for the development of some sort of tamper proof documents that can be used in any port of entry," said a staffer at Senator Bond’s office.
The bill would require countries that want to participate in the visa-waiver program to provide tamper-resistant, machine-readable passports.
The counter terrorism law signed by President Bush is designed to close visa loopholes exploited by the terrorist in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Some of the terrorists were in the country on expired visas, and others entered the country on student visas but never showed up for school.
The staffer at Senator Bond’s office told Arab News yesterday that their bill "tried to clean up the student aspect of it. The infrastructure has been planned and outlined, but never implemented, because it was supposed to be fee-based at the schools they attended, and this delayed the rollout.
"We got the language in the bill to speed up the rollout date to January 2003, and we received the authorization for funds for an Internet-based system that tracks who is here, where they are living, if they’re going to school or not, and if they quit they have to notify the authorities. So if they don’t show up for school, it will be raise an immediate red flag," the staffer said, who asked not to be identified.
The law requires a thorough background check for an immigrant to obtain an identification card. Student and travel visas will be tracked through an automated system to alert law-enforcement officials when visits have been overstayed.
