Monday, January 05, 203

BY BRIAN DONOHUE
Star-Ledger Staff

Foreigners arriving at Newark Liberty and 114 other U.S. airports will have their photos taken and fingerprints scanned beginning today as the federal government unveils a long-stalled effort to better track visitors.

The program, called U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, or US-VISIT, is designed to provide instant background checks on 24 million visitors a year by comparing traveler data with terrorist watch lists and federal immigration databases.

Travelers from 27 countries whose citizens do not need a visa for a six-month visit will be exempt. Most of those countries are in Europe.

Originally mandated by Congress in 1996, earlier efforts to build an automated entry/exit system foundered from a lack of funding, political opposition and feasibility concerns.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, however, made better tracking of visitors a top priority for the federal government.

Officials hope US-VISIT, which also starts today at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, will make it tougher for terrorists and illegal immigrants to use fake documents and prevent past visa violators from returning to the United States.

"This is not a new idea, but after 9/11 there was a greater impetus to put this in place," said Kimberly Weissman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The process is expected to add between 10 and 15 seconds to the process of clearing customs, Weissman said.

A digital photograph will be snapped while travelers are speaking with a customs officer and they will be asked to press their index fingers on a scanner, she said. Visitors will check in again as they leave the country at self-service kiosks that will be phased in during the new year, Homeland Security officials said.

Last year, the federal government required visitors from dozens of countries, mainly in the Middle East, to report to immigration offices for interviews and fingerprinting. That program was scrapped as officials prepared to launch US-VISIT.

The system replaces one that relied in part on the collection of small paper forms filled out by travelers before their planes landed.

US-VISIT, which was allocated $710 million in 2003-04, has been criticized by groups on both sides of the debate over immigration policy.

The Federation for Immigration Reform, a group that advocates stricter immigration rules, praised the tougher enforcement, but argued it would not be effective unless fingerprinting was mandatory for all visitors.

Immigration advocates, meanwhile, have criticized tougher enforcement of immigration laws as a largely ineffective way of combating terrorism.

"I don't think a terrorist has to overstay their visa to do us harm," said Judy Golub, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The lawyers' group also fears the government is not providing enough staff, funding and computer resources to keep US-VISIT from ensnaring innocent foreigners.

Federal immigration databases often are not up to date, Golub said, causing people to be listed as having an expired visa when they have actually filed or received an extension.

"It's our sense that it's underfunded, the deadlines were too ambitious and it's not going to do the job it's supposed to do, which is make us safer," Golub said.

Some foreign countries also are bristling at the idea that their residents will be fingerprinted.

In Brazil, police on Thursday began fingerprinting American visitors in retaliation for what a federal judge called a "xenophobic" reaction by the U.S. government.

Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva ordered the fingerprinting of U.S. visitors after Brazil's Federal Public Ministry filed a complaint seeking to have Brazilian visitors to the U.S. exempted from the fingerprinting program.

US-VISIT is scheduled to expand to include the 50 busiest land border crossings by the start of 2005.