DHS To Grab Biometric Data From Green Card Holders 248
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Nextgov:
"The Homeland Security Department has announced plans to expand its biometric data collection program to include foreign permanent residents and refugees. Almost all noncitizens will be required to provide digital fingerprints and a photograph upon entry into the United States as of Jan. 18. A notice (PDF) in Friday's Federal Register said expansion of the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program (US VISIT) will include 'nearly all aliens,' except Canadian citizens on brief visits. Those categories include permanent residents with green cards, individuals seeking to enter on immigrant visas, and potential refugees. The US VISIT program was developed after the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks to collect fingerprints from foreign visitors and run them against the FBI's terrorist watch list and other criminal databases. Another phase of the project, to develop an exit system to track foreign nationals leaving the country, has run into repeated setbacks."
Reader MirrororriM points out other DHS news that they're thinking about monitoring blogs for information on terrorists.
Redundant (not this post, but these fingerprints) (Score:5, Informative)
They're already doing this? (Score:1, Informative)
Um, last time I entered the country (a couple months ago), they're already taking every non-citizen's fingerprints. The lines were really long.
Re:Getting worse than the old USSR? (Score:5, Informative)
Remember the fear of being asked for "Your papers?" in the old USSR?
No. And I lived there. USSR had single document -- passport -- serving as the primary ID for everything. "Your papers?" stuff was from Nazi Germany, where government was extremely concerned about losing track of ethnic minorities, what seems to be the exact equivalent of this "effort" in US.
Already done (Score:4, Informative)
When I applied for (and subsequently received, in 2006) my green card, a photo and fingerprints were taken.
Re:Already done (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why not Canadians? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, we don't give a shit about your ports, we have plenty of ports of our own and many of them don't get buried in snow five months a year.
Actually you do. Our ports don't, vancouver never freezes and halifax is open 10+mo a year. The only ports that freeze are in the great lakes, you know the ones that ship out the majority of the grain to the rest of the world.
It's a two way street there. Don't get too smug, Canada needs the US more than the US needs Canada. And no, you don't provide the US with wealth, goods are only imported because it's cheaper to do so than to manufacture them internally. If ever the dollar returns to parity with the looney for an extended period of time, Canada will start hurting.
We don't need you, as much as you need us. That's the current reality of the world economy. We're a net exporter of finished and unfinished goods. Not a net importer. If you don't understand that, I'll explain. It means that if you throw a hissy fit, we simply say 'our market is now europe' and they buy our goods, or japan, or anyone else. While you're very good at consuming our goods, and tell me something do you even have the manufacturing base left to make anything? Or has it all been bulldozed over or left to rot. While we haven't had the manufacturing decay that you have, it still exists on some levels say textiles.
In the end it doesn't really matter if the Canadian dollar reaches US parity again, when the government already realized that having one free trade agreement doesn't guarantee a steady source of trade, and more are needed. And we can bank against the AUS, Yen and Euro.
Personal experience (Score:1, Informative)
I'm a greencard holder married to a local, resident since Aug. '98... I've been out of the country, oh, say 25 times since then, and was fingerprinted on 75% of re-entries... what's the fuss? If you hold a greencard they ALREADY have those fingerprints. Object to that if you can find a good reason.