WASHINGTON, 4 April 2004 — Millions of US visitors will be fingerprinted and photographed before entering the country, officials from the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday. This new registration will include citizens from 27 of America’s closest allies, including Australia, Britain and Japan, who currently enter the US under a “visa-waiver” program.
The change “will add security by allowing us to check travelers coming from visa-waiver countries against our terrorist and criminal watch list,” Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson told journalists.
Members of the US travel industry were quick to voice their disappointment: “Despite our vocal disagreement with this policy change during last week’s TIA Board of Directors’ meeting with DHS Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, it appears that it was the only way to negotiate the extension of the biometric requirement,” said Dexter Koehl, vice president of communications at the Travel Industry Association of American.
TIA, which represents the US tourism industry, has been lobbying Congress for several months to extend by two years the Oct. 26, 2004, deadline requiring biometric information — fingerprints and digital photographs — on passports for VISA Waiver travelers entering the US.
Without the deadline extension, Koehl said, as many as five to six million visa waiver travelers, or 15 percent of all overseas visitors, could encounter great difficulties in obtaining the proper documentation to enter the US later this year and in 2005.
The law that created US-VISIT (US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) set an Oct. 26 deadline for visa-waiver nations to have a biometric passport program in place, but only two of 27 countries are expected to meet that date, said Daniel Smith, at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.
Smith said as many as 5 million visitors a year who currently come to the US under the waiver program would require visas. “That would cause significant problems,” he added.
TIA said Secretary of State Colin Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge wrote Congress last week to urge it to expand US-VISIT as the tradeoff for extending the deadline for the biometric requirement for visa waiver countries.
Since its introduction on Jan. 5, 2.6 million travelers have traveled through US-VISIT’s 130 ports of entry, said Hutchinson, adding that the system identified 12,000 potential overstayers and 200 criminals, but no terrorists.
Earlier this week, the FBI issued a warning to 18,000 state and local police agencies, warning them to be on the alert for terrorists who might try to use cultural, arts or sports visas to gain illegal entry into the United States.
The FBI bulletin sent Wednesday to the agencies said that, based on intelligence information, various terrorist organizations might try to use “P Visas,” issued by the State Department for those visiting the US for various artistic, cultural or sporting events.
“Recent intelligence indicates that terrorist groups may be interested in exploiting cultural visa programs to infiltrate operatives and support network into the Untied States,” said the bulletin.
