BlackMan Time

The American government wants to force airline and cruise line companies to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the United States, starting in August 2009.

But the airline industry and embassies of 34 countries, including the members of the European Union, are urging the U.S. government to withdraw the plan, saying it would cost much more to implement than the George W. Bush-led proposal has indicated it will cost.

They also cite it is not their duty to enforce immigration and border security laws but the U.S. government’s. They further raised privacy concerns about companies collecting fingerprints.

This opposition is shaping up to become a major battle with Congress and the Bush administration, which want the new plan established quickly. The obvious major question here is: “Why the urgency? What’s the justification for enforcing such a decidedly Big Brother act when there is no apparent need for it, especially at a time when many airline industry companies are fighting for their economic survival?

The plan to track exiting foreign visitors is part of a program known as US-VISIT, an initiative that Congress first promoted in 1996 and launched after Sept. 11, 2001 to use fingerprints and digital photographs to automate the processing of visitors entering and exiting the country.

But the emphasis has been placed on identifying incoming visitors where photographing travellers at the point of entry, currently implemented, is easily done. Setting up systems to record exits is much more costly and this is why the US government is sneakily trying to pass on the cost to the travel industry itself.

There is a lot of fight to come in this story!