Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans entering B...

[imrthr]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

A BBC article discusses essentially the same issues only with photos

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3358627.stm

[trilingual]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

While I agree that exercising its right of reciprocity isn't always the smartest move on Brazil's part, especially when it wants to promote tourism, it may be the only way to get enough Americans sufficiently angry about the way we're starting to treat ALL foreign visitors to get them to start complaining to Congress. The only people who are "exempt" from such treatment are almost all (surprise, surprise!) white Europeans. (The exceptionts are the Japanese and, I think, the Singaporeans.) Meanwhile, ALL visitors from Latin America and most of the rest of the world will have to undergo the humiliation of being treated like criminals. I mean, how many Brazilian or Argentine terrorists have we had lately?

 

I understand the U.S. has security issues, and it continues to be a magnet for illegal immigration, but there are other ways to deal with those problems. What is it about us that we have to adopt the ugliest, nastiest tactics for dealing with people? And why do we wonder about the reasons we're so despised abroad? Could it have to do with the extremist, sicko, xenophobic way we treat everyone else, all the while that we hypocritically proclaim ourselves as the bastion of freedom, the world's best country, and all that other crap? It really makes one ashamed to be an American at times. If I didn't have aging parents and beloved friends back in the U.S., I'd be very tempted just to stay away for good. Especially if the Shrub gets elected in 2004. Once my parents are gone, I may never return.

[duke37]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

Hello Brazilnuts!

 

I'm curious what the response was in Brazil to the same action by the French?

 

Here's an article about it...

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2989637.stm

 

Jeff

[Guest msclonly]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

I really don't understand getting so wired about getting finger printed. It shouldn't be the first time for most people.

[imrthr]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

>I really don't understand getting so wired about getting

>finger printed. It shouldn't be the first time for most

>people. >

 

I disagree. Most people have not gone through the process of being fingerprinted and photographed for routine travel to a foreign country. Many people have been fingerprinted and photographed for a job or a license but that is not demeaning or under hostile situations.

 

Can you imagine how much time it will take to get through Brazilian immigration with this new process in place? With several planes landing each hour and each plane holding at least two hundred people, how much time do you think will be added to the process of clearing immigration in Brazil?

 

As a result of the demeaning treatment of being photographed and fingerprinted, how many potential tourists will simply remove Brazil from their travel agendas?

 

Although I do not agree that the process is a good process, I can understand America's fingerprinting and photographing of tourists from certain countries that have a history of violence and threats against America. However, for America to arbitrarily exempt certain Europeans and certain Asians from this demeaning treatment while forcing all other tourists to submit to the process is, at a minimum, discriminatory. But then, what else should people expect from an administration that nominates and forces confirmation of people like Ashcroft and Hutchinson.

[+ Hoover42]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

I think most U.S. citizens have not been fingerprinted.

 

I understand that some people would find it demeaning, but it wouldn't bother me much. I would be more annoyed with having to stand in line for hours while all the U.S. citizens on the plane were being documented.

 

I would be MUCH more upset by a strip search.

 

Let's hope they don't escalate it to that level.

[Guest msclonly]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

I am grateful for the increased steps toward security at this time in the U.S.

The decision for Brazil to copy it is NOT the fault of the U.S. authorities, that have more information then anyone on this board about what is really going on! Perhpas you should let the Brazilian authorities, that they are violating your rights to get to town faster on arrival, and let them change their 'reciprocity', if you are unhappy with it.

[Guest EmilioNY]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

Thank you trilingual for a lucid and and clear view on the the nasty and disgusting ways the US treats allmost every other country in the world.

[imrthr]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

>the U.S. authorities, have more information then anyone on

>this board about what is really going on! Perhpas you should

>let the Brazilian authorities, that they are violating your

>rights to get to town faster on arrival, and let them change

>their 'reciprocity', if you are unhappy with it.

>

 

My, oh my! Blind faith in our government! That is a scary thought. I did not say in my posting that my rights were being violated by the Brazilian authorities as you wrote above. Based on your posting I get the impression that you have done very little travel for tourism. Also based on your posting, it is obvious that you did not accurately read what was written in the Reuters articles or what I wrote above.

[Guest Love Bubble Butt]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

>I really don't understand getting so wired about getting

>finger printed. It shouldn't be the first time for most

>people.

 

 

I agree with you.

 

It's a security precaution. And I'd rather they go too far in providing security than risk not going far enough. If the lines are long, I think the solution would be to add more resources to the process than eliminate the fingerprinting and photographing.

[Guest msclonly]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

I have NO doubt that I have MORE miles then you do with travels around the world many times over many years. For years, I voiced my concern about the lax procedures at our borders and the numbers of people coming into the country without official approval or screening. So now, we are in a serious state of Emergency due to the 'liberal' nonexistent policies of the last 30 years.

 

I never observed this in any other country or behind the Iron or Bamboo curtains!

[jakobsen]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

The fingerprinting and photographing of foreign visitors to the U.S. is not as bad as it sounds. When I first read this thread, I had images of boooking procedures--mug shots and fingerprinting--at police stations.

 

I passed through U.S. immigration at Logan Airport yesterday (I am a U.S. citizen) and noticed a tennis-ball size webcam and an inkless digital finger scanner. The machines are quite unobtrusive and the whole process would take no more than 10 seconds while the immigration inspector scans the passport and staples the departure form to it. It is not as Judge da Silva describes as “brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis.”

 

As the U.S. is the only remaining country that has no exit procedure, sometime in 2004 foreign visitors will be able to confirm their departure by having their index fingers scanned again. Those of us who have endured the long queus at immigration in Sao Paulo or Rio airport wish they would have the same automated entry/exit procedures.

 

The streamlining of entry/exit procedure at U.S. airports starting January 5, 2004, is long overdue and facilitates the entry of cirizens and visitors while enhancing our security.

 

By the way, I doubt that President Lula and his Worker's Party, who's in control of congress, will let Judge da Silva's ruling stand. Lula has taken great pains not to offend the United States. Now that a ruling has been made, if she hasn't already done so, I'm sure the American Ambassador will ask Lula to block the judge's mandate. She will argue, as I have done above, that changes in U.S. immigration procedures are meant to streamline the entry and exit of visitors.

 

Furthermore, Lula's government cannot afford to cut social programs further in order to fund the judge's mandate. The Federal Police will not welcome this added requirement with open arms; they are already upset that Lula's government has proposed raising the retirement age and increasing social security taxes for federal workers, so that it is in line with industry standards.

 

I welcome your comments.

 

P.S. By the way, I don't work for the government and I voted for Gore.

[trilingual]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

I would point out that Brazil is somewhat unusual in being such a stickler for observing reciprocity. Most other Latin American countries (which seek to promote tourism) don't require visas for American citizens, even when the U.S. does require visas for their citizens. I don't think Brazil particularly helps itself by insisting on reciprocity in every instance, but then I'm not a voter here and the government isn't paying much attention to me!

 

Even so, the way the U.S. treats visa applicants is shameful, and the reality of how we behave stands in the starkest contrast to our endlessly nauseating proclamations of being the land of the free and the last best hope of democracy. Every single day of the year, we demonstrate in practice that it's all bullshit, and that we're actually a fearful, xenophobic society that's rapidly taking on the trappings of a police state (and believe me, an awful lot of foreigners know from very personal experience what those are like). What goes on behind closed doors and blank walls in U.S. immigration offices has been written about extensively here on this board and in the foreign press. As far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse. The very real problems the U.S. faces can be dealt with much more effectively through other means that don't involve pissing off the entire world.

[Guest shengen101]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

>I would point out that Brazil is somewhat unusual in being

>such a stickler for observing reciprocity. Most other Latin

>American countries (which seek to promote tourism) don't

>require visas for American citizens, even when the U.S. does

>require visas for their citizens.

 

Yes but both Argentina and Chile, apply reciprocity to the visa fee upon arrival though not the visa itself. For reciprocity to work, the "victims" of it must complain loudly and steadilly at home, not abroad.

[trilingual]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

I don't know about Chile, but I haven't heard of any American being charged US$100 (the current U.S. charge for a tourist visa) when entering Argentina as a tourist. Perhaps if someone is entering as something other than a tourist?

 

Someone recently said that Paraguay is now requring visas for Americans, on a reciprocity basis. Considering how few Americans visit Paraguay, anyway, that seems like a dumb move on their part, if it's true. The few who might be tempted to cross over when they visit Iguassu Falls just won't bother seeing Ciudad del Este or the ruins of the old Jesuit missions a few hours away. Otherwise, there's hardly any need to visit Paraguay, anyway, unless you want to launder some money or relay instructions to some Hezbollah cell there! (The bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish mutual aid society in Buenos Aires are thought to have been carried out or coordinated from the Iguassu Falls area, which has a high number of Arab immigrants and is a huge center for smuggling and money-laundering in the three-country border zone.)

[sf traveler]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

I have to add my two cents to this discussion. While I completely agree that the US policy here is not likely to be effective, insulting, discriminatory, will result in even more anti-Americanism than already exists and just plain dumb, I don't believe that reciprocal assinity on the Brazilians' part is likely to help the situation. The question in my mind is not whether this policy, which thankfully looks likely to be overturned before it is implemented, is fair but rather whether it is wise. Frankly, for a country desparately seeking to increase employment opportunities for the less educated, tourism is a natural. As most of you know, Brazil has an incredible wealth of natural and man-made beauty that the wider world is only now beginning to notice. Anything which discourages tourism will only rebound to the detriment of those Brazilians least able to provide for themselves--even if loud-mouthed advocates of a 19th century brand of nationalism have something to feel self-satisfied about. If I'm hesitating on buying my ticket until this is resolved, you know lots of other people are too. And for those of you in Brazil right now, you should know that this is getting reasonably wide media coverage here--and, of course, when the ruling's reversed, that will be ignored. Anyway, please, don't tell me how awful George W. and his cohorts are--I didn't vote for him and I'm well aware of how obnoxious he and his are. The simple truth is that two wrongs don't make a right and that emulating their behavior isn't the way any country should respond to it. SF Traveler

[Guest pyell]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

As I said in the other thread on this topic (in the Politics and World affairs area), the invasion of privacy with computerised tracking of passports is already so pervasive that nobody could be seriously upset by adding fingerprinting and photographing to the procedure. If you don't like the invasion of privacy, stay at home.

 

As to reciprocal visas, Australia has required visas from everybody (except New Zealanders) for decades. Sometimes other countries have tried reciprocal reprisals (eg France) but it hasn't lasted long. On my forthcoming trip to Europe, for example, I won't require a visa to go anywhere in western Europe, but I will (as usual) require visas for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. On my recent trip to South America I didn't require visas for Argentina or Peru, eventually I didn't need one for Uruguay (it wasn't required, then it was briefly, then it wasn't again), and I did need one for Brazil. Thus I decided not to bother with Brazil this time round.

 

Once upon a time the USA required visas from everybody including Australians too. This became so timeconsuming and expensive that a few years ago it was dropped. But the countries for whom it was dropped were generally those with their own reliable security systems for issuing passports, and who were not normally the homelands of major terrorist groups. In addition, you could only get visa-free entry if you arrived on a reputable airline that had done some necessary security checks at the other end.

 

As it happens, most of the countries who enjoy visa-free entry are advanced western nations. That's hardly a surprise, though. With few exceptions you need to be an advanced western nation to meet the criteria set out above. Nor is it all that racist. Japan and (I think) Singapore both qualify, as do black and muslim Britons and arab and muslim French.

[buckguy]

Brazil & Chile both seem to have reciprocation policies that extend beyond the US. It remains to be seen how much actual effect they have on tourism. People who do arrangements through a travel agent are usually oblivious to this stuff. The people most hit by the fees are backpacker types, who tend to be better for the local economy than people like us---they spend as much as "package tourists" but do it over a longer period of time and patronize more local businesses. Given that tourism often exacts environmental costs, etc., developing tourism as a primary way of generating hard currency is often a mixed bag.

 

The administration strikes as more culpable than the Brazilians. The formulation of policy relating to security has been poorly thought out and often has more political than practical implications. Consider that Brazil has a populist center-left leader who is not popular with Wall Street--no one is going to think about being nice to the Brazilians. Fingerprinting is only useful the system can make efficient use of this information--my guess is that it isn't and that this is just one of the many un-necessary abridgments of civil liberties that the administration has imposed in the name of security.

 

As for fingerprinting--I never needed to do it until I aplied for a security clearance, well into middle age. It's not something to be taken lightly.

[Guest msclonly]

I don't see fingerprinting any more threatening then giving my Driver's License Number or Social Security Number!

I also don't hear of how finger printing violates out civil rights or how it causes sliding the slippery slope, so many are found of spinning.

 

 

}(

[imrthr]

RE: Fingerprinting and Photographs

 

>I also don't hear of how finger printing violates out civil

>rights or how it causes sliding the slippery slope, so many

>are found of spinning.

 

???? The only mention of rights being violated is in your postings to this thread! No one here has stated that our rights have been violated by the ruling of the Brazilian court. You have misinterpreted our postings just as you have misinterpreted the Reuters articles that announced the court's ruling. Please reread the Reuters articles and reread our postings. Thanks.

[trilingual]

RE: Fingerprinting and Photographs

 

Part of the problem (a BIG part of the problem) is that U.S. immigration law specifically states that everyone who wants to come to the U.S. for any reason must be treated as an intending immigrant. That means that you essentially have to prove to a visa issuing officer that you don't intend to immigrate to the U.S., even if your only reason for going to the U.S. is to take the family for a holiday at Disney World, or you're going to a relative's wedding. In other words, everyone is considered guilty of intending to be an illegal immigrant unless they prove otherwise. This explains the invasive and humiliating ordeal that visa applicants to the U.S. have to undergo, even when they're citizens of countries that aren't sources of terrorism or other threats to the U.S.

 

Other countries, like the European ones, have immigration problems, too, but they deal with them in different ways that aren't so offensive and blatantly xenophobic. The U.S. could do the same thing. The current procedures are making us enemies every single day of the year.

 

As an example, the Brazilian nightly news tonight somewhat gleefully covered the new fingerprinting requirements. It also highlighted how a Brazilian woman who's an interpreter-translator by profession, who has been to the U.S. six times previously, was refused entry a couple of days ago. Her visa was cancelled by some officious clerk without any explanation, and she was held incommunicado in a small room for 13 hours before being put on a plane back home. This isn't unusual; it happens every day to hundreds of people. Guess how much poison this injects into world opinion about the U.S.?

 

Besides making enemies, our paranoid behavior is going to ruin the tourism industry in areas heavily dependent on foreign visitors, like Florida, New York and California. Hard as this may be for many Americans to believe, there ARE other attractive destinations for foreign holiday-makers. Destinations that don't require visas, or if they do don't submit applicants to humiliation and disrespect in order to get a visa. Maybe when Jeb Bush's Florida truly starts going under because Latin American tourism has completely dried up (and you probably have no idea how dependent Florida has been on Latin American tourism in the past decades) this brain-dead administration may finally get a jolt. But somehow I doubt it. They're all rich, so what do they care if some motel cleaning lady loses her job because of their folly?

 

Bleah! Whatta way to start a New Year! x(

[trilingual]

RE: Fingerprinting and & photographing Americans enteri...

 

>As it happens, most of the countries who enjoy visa-free entry

>are advanced western nations. That's hardly a surprise,

>though. With few exceptions you need to be an advanced

>western nation to meet the criteria set out above. Nor is it

>all that racist. Japan and (I think) Singapore both qualify,

>as do black and muslim Britons and arab and muslim French.

 

It may not be deliberately racist, but it has the same effect. It's also useless. The basic requirement for a country being included in the U.S. visa waiver program is that most arriving visitors from that country go home. If more than a certain percentage each year overstay their entry permits, or never return home, they can be dropped from the program. This happened in recent years to Argentina, for example, because illegal immigration from Argentina grew dramatically after the economic meltdown there. During the prosperous years of 1 peso to 1 dollar, Argentines could travel to the U.S. without a visa.

 

Obviously, it's the citizens of developed nations who are least likely to try to emigrate illegally to the U.S. The majority of those nations happen to be white and Christian. So there's an unintended discriminatory effect at work. Unfortunately, the threat of terrorism comes just as much from those developed Christian countries as from the Middle East. Europe is full of disaffected Muslims (and some sympathizers). Many of the 9/11 attackers lived in Europe for years. Richard Reed, the shoe bomber, is a British subject. So the U.S. is still open to attack from citizens of those "developed, advanced" nations. Meanwhile, how many suicide terrorists from Latin America has the U.S. faced? We've alienated an entire continent for no good reason at all!

[imrthr]

The following article just appeared off Reuters and other news media:

____________________________________________________________________

 

 

Brazil judge orders U.S. citizens fingerprinted

Tuesday, December 30, 2003 Posted: 11:02 PM EST (0402 GMT)

 

 

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) -- A Brazilian judge furious at U.S. plans to fingerprint and photograph Brazilians entering the United States has ordered Brazil to do the same to U.S. citizens, police said on Tuesday.

 

The order, set to go into effect on January 1, came after a government office filed a complaint in federal court over the U.S. measure aimed at millions of foreign travelers.

 

"Unless the court order is contested in the justice system, it will be complied with," said a spokesman for Brazil's Federal Police, the agency overseeing immigration.

 

Starting January 5, citizens of countries such as Brazil who need a visa to enter the United States will be fingerprinted and photographed when they pass through immigration at major U.S. airports and seaports.

 

The procedure is meant to identify people who have violated immigration controls, have a criminal record or belong to groups the U.S. government lists as terrorist organizations.

 

The checks will not be carried out against citizens of 27 nations who do not need a visa to enter the United States.

 

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," said Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva in the court order released on Tuesday.

 

Brazil currently requires U.S. citizens to have a visa when entering the country.

___________________________________________________________________

 

 

This is not a friendly way for Brazil to promote tourism to their country. I understand the anger that Braziians feel over such a stupid new law that only effects certain foreign visitors to America. Western Europeans are exempt from such a process. I can imagine the delays that will be created upon entry to Brazil. Oh, well, I did not vote for Bush!