WASHINGTON, 29 October 2003 — Department of Homeland Security officials yesterday presented the Washington press corps with new technology designed to monitor foreign visitors in the United States. The scanners will eventually be used to verify all travelers’ identities through electronically scanned biometric fingerprint imaging.
Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary of border and transportation security, Department of Homeland Security, demonstrated the US-VISIT technology — the inkless fingerprint scanners to be used to verify the identity of foreign nationals traveling to the US on visas.
The system, which will go online next October when all 211 US visa-issuing offices worldwide will be using the technology, is designed to work together with the machine-readable, tamper-proof US visas and a huge computer database of names, fingerprints and photographs.
Homeland Security intends to use the information to check the identity, and record the arrival and departure of each of the 440 million individuals who visit the United States annually.
Known as US-VISIT, for “United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology,” the system will first be used to scan individuals at airports and seaports. Homeland Security intends to broaden the system to a vast biometric border-control system.
The first stage of the US-VISIT capability will be implemented at air and seaports by Dec. 31, 2003.
Not everyone is pleased with the restrictions, especially the travel industry and companies that do business overseas. They say the tighter visa control controls are hurting the tourism industry and US business overseas.
Last week, business groups told a Senate panel the government should restructure or delay initiating the new changes, insisting on the need for a better balance between security and commerce.
“Since Sept. 11, we’ve had a downer,” said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding that all members of his committee were “worried about our economy.”
“We are worried about security (measures) that businesses are taking... or trips that were not taken, sales that were not made, or tourism that did not occur,” said Sen. Lugar.
Stewart Verdery, assistant secretary of homeland security for policy in the border and transportation-security division, said he thought the balance between security and commerce was “just about right,” but acknowledged that on some issues security had taken priority over other concerns.
Last summer, for example, the Department of Homeland Security suspended the transit-with-out-a-visa program, which had previously allowed air passengers to change planes in the United States even if they did not have a visa to enter the country.
Jose Estorino. senior vice president of marketing for the Orlando, Florida, Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the drop-off in tourism from overseas had cost the US economy $15.3 billion since 2000.
