Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Correspondent

WASHINGTON, 6 January 2004 — The United States yesterday began fingerprinting and photographing most foreign visitors. The Department of Homeland Security said its new program, US-VISIT, was now in effect for most foreign visitors with non-immigrant visas at 115 airports and 14 seaports.

The new security system uses biometrics, which uses the individual’s physical characteristics by scanning a visitor’s index fingers and using a digital photograph to verify identity at a port of entry.

As for the amount of time the new procedure is expected to take — it depends.

“A lot of instances will be up to an inspector in a port of entry. Just because you haven’t done anything wrong, doesn’t mean that you won’t be asked to pass through a second tier of inspection,” said Garrison Courtney, an immigration and customs enforcement official at Homeland Security.

The secondary inspection will enable more intensive research into a person’s background, which requires asking them more questions, said Courtney.

“This is more of the check-in and checkout process,” said Courtney. “It is one of the tools (available to us), but not all of them. There are multiple systems available to determine the validity of a person, which an inspector can now use at any port of entry.”

But how effective can this process be when 27 countries are allowed a “visa waiver” when traveling to the US? One British citizen, dubbed the “shoe bomber,” tried to blow up an airplane.

“Yes, visa waiver countries are exempt from going through US-VISIT,” said Kimberly Weissman, a spokesperson for Homeland Security. “However, the officer receives advance passenger information and can refer an individual from any country in the world to go to our secondary process for further screening and a more in-depth interview.”

She explained that by October, these 27 visa waiver countries will be required by law to institutionalize programs that will use an international biometric standard for facial recognition.

“We are helping our partners abroad with this,” said Weissman. “What we’ve done today is the first step of the multilayered process which we will continue to upgrade and expand.”

The program is to enhance the security of US citizens and travelers who visit here, she said, by better verifying that the individual is actually that person. “When you capture biometric abroad, the person is put into the system, so when they come to a port of entry, it’s much easier to verify them through biometric technologies,” she said.

Citizens of most European countries and Australia are exempted under the visa waiver from undergoing the procedure.