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Posted on 06/05/2002 12:14:17 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Outraging Arab and immigration groups, the U.S. government will require as many as 100,000 visitors a year -- most of them Middle Eastern men -- to be fingerprinted, photographed and registered in an effort to monitor possible terrorists, officials said on Wednesday.
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"This is about terrorist tracking," one official said. "It is one way to make sure we are doing everything we can to monitor possible terrorists."
The change was prompted by concern about the lack of records on tourists, students and other foreign visitors after the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites), the officials said.
The plan drew instant condemnation.
"Hundreds of thousands of people are going to have to register with the authorities. I just find it galling. It will alienate a lot of people," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum.
'SMACKS OF TOTALITARIAN TACTICS'
The plan "smacks of the sort of tactics" used by totalitarian regimes like Iraq, he said. "It's contrary to everything we know, both pre- and post-Sept. 11, about how to track terrorists."
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a policy group, agreed, saying the change would add to an already overburdened process and would fail to help improve security.
He said it was adopted despite concerns from the State Department and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. He called it a political initiative designed to send the message the administration was "doing something" about terrorism.
U.S. officials acknowledged there would be complaints the plan amounted to a form of profiling because it targeted mainly Middle Eastern men, but said the measure was necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks.
It was the latest counterterrorism plan from Ashcroft to spark criticism. Last week, he gave the FBI (news - web sites) broad new powers to spy domestically at places like mosques and political rallies.
Under rules adopted in 1998, only visitors from Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan had to go through the process that includes registering with federal authorities, photographing and fingerprinting.
The new plan would expanded the scrutiny to countries identified as having the highest risk for terrorism. The officials declined to identify the nations, but acknowledged it was mainly Middle Eastern countries.
The officials estimated the change would affect about 100,000 visitors to the United States each year.
Not all visitors from the countries would have to register, the officials said. They said the program was aimed at males.
The same approach was used by Ashcroft as part of the counterterrorism program announced in March to question 3,000 more foreign nationals who recently came to this country, most of whom came from Middle Eastern nations.
The initial list for questioning in November totaled about 5,000 men, aged 18 to 33, who entered the United States on non-immigrant visas after Jan. 1, 2000, and have passports from countries where Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network has been present or active.
Outraging Al-Quida and other terrorist groups, the U.S. government will require as many as 100,000 potential terrorists a year -- most of them matching descriptions of fanatics who flew planes into inhabited buildings -- to be fingerprinted, photographed and registered in an effort to send them stern letters, officials said on Wednesday.
Absolutely falling on the floor laughing and crying!!!
It makes too much sense.
I'll bump that!
Your reasons make sense to me. Hard to misspell a fingerprint! </sarcasm off
Heh heh... I loooove this.
New Rule, if we can pin the trouble makers with a nationality, that nation has to PAY FOR and PUNISH the collaborators on their turf, or PAY for and receive the perpetrator's "justice due" in flesh and blood, in hard terms... ie... heads on pikes if you will.
It's time for foreigners to have to obey the laws of the land, like fingerprints for ID cards and D. Licenses of the several states that make up this republic. Why should THEY have more freedoms than californians do?
This is GOOD news and a step in the right direction.
If they don't like it leave!
If Arabs had put up as much resistance to terrorism used by their peers non of this would be happening.
| Let's hope they don't cave on this like the the Republicans do so often when they face a tough issue (though really, this shouldn't even be tough).
It is a measure of how far out of touch the press liberals are that this article contains not one quote from a person who supports this measure... it's just the usual collection of quotations from liberals attacking a Republican administration. There has been so much of that over the last couple of months -- some of it just sickening, like Gephardt's "What did he know and when did he know it?" -- that I think even the dimmer bulbs out there are starting to see what a problem we have with liberal bias in the news. |
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This isn't a tough issue. This is just The Usual Suspects screaming like stuck pigs, in a country that doesn't want to hear it anymore.