Usa Photo/fingerprint I/d

[SPIT]

Hi
All I want to know is due to the current draconian measures suggested by the USA (supposedly the Land of the Free??) is "When aircrew and cabin crew make regular trips to the USA do they have to be Photographed and Fingerprinted like criminals EVERY TIME they arrive in the USA ???
:mad: :mad: :mad:

[ETOPS]

Yes - and don't forget to smile!

[GlueBall]

Contact your elected politicians and demand that all visiting Americans be fingerprinted and photographed upon entry to your country, as Brasil had the courage to do. If enough countries rightfully retaliate, then plenty Americans will taste their own medicine and get this idiotic hyper security mania reversed.

[Animalclub]

Wouldn't you agree that every country has a right to know of all aliens either visiting or residing in their country? Just for the management of the country at least... health, utilities etc... not to mention security.

How many villains would have been caught if finger printing had been completed at international entry ports in any country? This is not a breach of civil liberties... it is to protect those civil liberties.

[JJflyer]

GlueBall... I did just that.

Big brother is watching and we all have less and less freedom to enjoy.

JJ

[Tinstaafl]

"...protecting civil liberties"? What? By ensuring *no one* has access to them?

[Loc-out]

It is known as closing the gate after the horse has bolted.

[Dani]

I disagree with those who want retaliation!
Let the US citizens come to us and enjoy our freedom. So they know at least what means hospitality. USA is hurting its own economy if most of the people do not want to spend their holidays there anymore.
So the correct way to answer to this sanctions is to stay away and wait until they do better.

Dani

[Lu Zuckerman]

It seems that most of the objections to the photo and fingerprint requirement are from posters from European countries. I think you have been on the wrong side of Alice’s’ looking glass for too long.

Most European countries are police states and require registration with the police when you move from one place to another. Maybe things have slacked off since the EU was formed but to my knowledge it is easier to move or travel to another country without passports and /or visas. But once in that new country you must register and make yourself known to the police.

You have been living under those conditions for so long that they are second nature. However to an American these conditions are totally alien. I lived in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands and I worked for a Swiss based company. In each country I had to go through the police registration process in order to live in or work for the respective countries.

When you are issued a US passport you are told to never surrender the passport to anybody other than for entry into a country. In most European countries when you register in a hotel with a foreign passport you must surrender it to the desk clerk that in turn gives it to the police.
You get it back the next day but you wonder what was done to it overnight.

Prior to 911 if you entered into the United States all you had to do was fill out a card given to you by the airline. If you would be staying for any length of time you would fill out an alien registration card. And if staying on a work or study visa you would get the visa from the American embassy or consulate in your home country. The only thing that has changed to effect you directly is that you are photographed and your fingerprint (one finger) is taken by a scanner. The whole process takes less than a minute of your time. Once past that point you can travel to any of the fifty states without having to clear with the police or any other authority and you don’t in most cases have to show your passport. If you are driving in a rental car they will ask for your car license number and also they may ask for your drivers license. That’s it, nothing more. Just a fingerprint and a photo. Compare that to the police states in which you may live and then find fault with the American requirement.


:E :E

[pigboat]

BOOM!!!...whhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....CRASH!! :E

It's not too late to install the mg's and torpedo racks on the 'boat.;)

[Blacksheep]

The compulsory registration of aliens by many European states is a legacy of the second world war that was also enforced in Germany by the occupying powers - led by guess which nation...

In the European Police State that I come from, the people have resisted identification cards for years. British police don't routinely photograph and finger print crime suspects and only handcuff people when they are resisting arrest, not as a matter of normal procedure. Liberties are hard won and easily lost - you have to stick up for them. Even in Britain there are now moves afoot to issue ID cards but any attempt to impose them by law would cause uproar and could bring a government down. Recently the British were reduced to the indignity of putting their photgraphs on Driving Licences, but that was a result of 'Police State' EC regulations and wasn't accepted without a murmur by the British who grumbled over their tea for several days. Jolly British 'Scarlet Pimpernels' are only too happy to provide asylum to Johnny Foreigners fleeing the horrors of continental police states.

The British - especially those dwelling in the Province of Northern Ireland - have been the victims of terrorism for thirty years, much of it financed legally from the United States of America; a country which also provided political asylum to several wanted terrorists for many years, until America also fell victim to international terrorism. Despite that, the British have more or less successfully resisted unneccesary intrusions by The State into their privacy. At the conclusion of the second world war they actually held mass Identity Card burnings in the streets - though they were more circumspect with their ration books.

If you want to visit the real home of the brave and land of the free, try a trip to UK, Lu. ;)
(but do keep irony mode in operation)

[West Coast]

Blacksheep

I somehow just don't see me getting my panties in a bunch like some here if I was required to be finger printed upon arrival in another country. Just not a big deal unless you have nothing else to bitch about.

Funny, the Irish living in NI have been the victims of terrorism for over 30 years at the hands of thugs aligned with the UK, the UDF, et al.
The Israeli government has in the past named the UK as the largest overseas cash cow for Hamas. Funny, I see the US damned for its support for the IRA, but a similar situation in the UK gets little play.

The real home of the land of the free and home of the brave, and videotaped. Surely that must be what you meant to say isn't it?

Quite interesting that I as as American find my freedoms as I enjoyed them pre 911 no more impinged upon than after. Granted I am not using the computer at the library at research how to blow up a building. I will leave it to you to determine the freedoms I enjoyed in the past are no more.

[I.B. Pilot]

Havn't read so much garbage in a long time.

First and foremost, let me remind the free and happy Europeans that was it not for the USA, they would all still be living in a European Union. They would even have one language and one flag. The language is German and the flag would have the swastika.

To read a British subject talking about freedom taken away, may I remind him that his country covers more of its cities with cameras and monitoring than any other country in the wortld. Fact!!

To all the other bashers of America, I have only one question - How many of you have applied or would apply if you could for the coveted Green Card, an immigrant's ticket to America. Probably many...

To not understand why the US needs to know who enters the country, only indicates how little some understand about national security. Well, it takes all kinds, even some ignorant ones, to make this world whole.

[Dani]

[Quote] "...to be finger printed upon arrival in another country. Just not a big deal..." [end quote]

You obviously never have been finger printed by US immigration officers...
You get out of your plane after a long flight, tired or excited to be arrived at your destination. The process of taking finger prints may take only a few seconds, but the hunderts of other immigrants before you in the queue may last it a little longer...!
And if the scanner process is not working (which happens all the time), you are forced to slap your finger in that ugly grease box where everyone else already had its fingers (do we talk about spreading deseases already?), and when you look in that camera and don't look the way they want, its another reason to let you wait some more time. I know crews that waited for hours in front of those immigration desks, and they are not just miserable exceptions.

The "police state's" procedure in "old Europe" likewise is best practise: You go quickly through customs, you let the hotel make a photo copy of your passport (that's what they are doing with it, not giving it to the police - they are not interested in it, they are not stupid and know that crews most of the time are no terrorists), while you sleep in your bed.

Let's face the facts: These prohitive immigration procedures are worth nothing (because no terrorist will walk in that way), are planned and executed in a purely schematic way and harm the US economy the most.

Dani

[garthy]

As far as I can deduce, most suicide bombers (in their various guises) commit the act only once.
Mostly they are recruited from "normal" families, and from various parts of the world (including the UK a few months ago in Israel), having committed no crime previously. What are fingerprints and a photo going to do? Maybe provide Fox News with an instant image to show the nation rather than the torn body parts that would litter the streets? I hardly imagine Bin Laden stepping off a flight to JFK suddenly thinking "whoops, caught out by the scanner!"
As for American comments on state sponsored terrorism in the Middle East, an awful lot of people query the American relationship with Israel and its apparent double-faced attitude to acts of terror, but that's not for this forum

[West Coast]

Garthy
Suicide bomber may only commit it once but his/her handlers are experts at it. Who is to say all these guys even want to claim the booty of virgins and what ever else is promised.The masterminds of the Madrid bombing didn't die in the train bombings now did they? They planted the bombs and high tailed it out of there. You have to believe they died only as a result of being cornered by the police. They had more bombings planned it appears. I stand to be corrected but I believe the nightclub attack in Bali wasn't a suicide bombing, the original attacks on the WTC were not carried out by suicide bombers either.

If someone thinks that OBL would hop the red eye to America, well, you may need to do a little more thinking. We wouldn't need any fingerprints to ID him. Its his underlings that this is meant to help with.

If you are going to talk of state sponsered terrorism, make sure you bring the offshore funding on both sides in to the equation. You may not like that aspect of it if you reside in the UK.

As to the delays for the process of finger printing, it should be a streamlined for efficiency. It will hopefully, but the delay at the airport doesn't mean the concept is wrong. And to answer your question, as a former member of the military, former government employee, current airline pilot and volunteer baseball coach(background investigation req) I have been fingerprinted by quite a number of agencies.

I'm glad to see so much providence on this board as to terrorist methods. No need to fingerprint anyone as the bad guys have already used the airlines once. They would never think of catching the early morning flight in to the US from your country.
Why waste our money on something the baddies would never use again. I'll pass your reccomendations to the gov.

[Blacksheep]

Wow so much fun for so little effort!!

Does anyone wonder, like me, how the British intelligence services ever thought up that master stroke of monitoring mobile phone traffic? Catching a terrorist cell before they had even selected their target is pretty cool stuff. Maybe they had lessons from Cubby Broccoli?

As a former miltary man, government employee and expatriate engineer the only people who have any of my prints are the Aliens unit ( I put 'Mars' under Place of Birth on the application form) of the local National Registration section of the Interior Ministry (muslims to a man) and they only have my thumb prints. Nowadays I must always remember to put elastoplasts on my thumbs before committing criminal offences, although the sunglasses and beard on my ID Card mugshot provides a certain amount of cover. So much for civil liberties... The British police have lots of footage of my real mug in their video records and I can well imagine the excitement created in New Scotland Yard's gigantic video monitoring centre when I carried that large brown paper parcel down Oxford Street just a couple of weeks ago. Especially after the video monitor in a St. Albans garden centre recorded me buying that large sack of fertilizer only a few days earlier. I wonder if that had anything to do with the strange waiter in Vega putting sellotape on my empty water glass? Lately I've been thinking of beating my wife into wearing a headscarf just to wind them up a bit more. You can have loadsa fun with a mobile phone too - just dial anyone at random and say a few selected words like 'Osama' 'Mladic' 'Radovan' 'centrifuge' or 'James Hewitt' for example... Since it's just down the road from St Albans I popped into the masjid in Finsbury Park to pick up a copy of one of their popular publications on the benefits of martyrdom. That should be good for fixing up a couple of Special Branch coppers with a few nights in the freezing rain, hiding behing the bushes over the road, eh?

BTW, is irony completely dead west of Rockall?

[West Coast]

I sifted through your post but couldn't find anything of worth.

[GlueBall]

Curiously, Muhammad Atta's fingerprints and visa would have checked out "OK" to enter the U.S. He had no previous record and wasn't on any immigration "watch list." In fact his "approved" student visa had arrived in the mail at his flight school five months after he had flown his hijacked AA jet into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Likewise, citizen Timothy McVeigh's fingerprints or biometric data would have checked out "OK" as well at FBI HQ. McVeigh had no previous record and was a decorated Gulf War 1 veteran before he had decided to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building with 4000 lbs of fertilizer soaked in kerosine on the back of a rented Ryder truck, much the same modus operanti that Al Qaeda operative Muhammad Salahme had done at the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Subjecting millions of law abiding foreign visitors daily to the demeaning finger-printing, photographing and instant permanent collection of personal data process...all in the name of preventing a handful of terrorists from entering the country "legally" at the border, is a dangerous case of government Big Brother syndrome gone over the top. Beware that the big American government is making all carriers of flights arriving at U.S. ports to fork over passengers' flight itineraries and personal data obtained at airline check-in counters upon embarkation.

The most shocking part is that millions of travelers are willingly surrendering their dignity and personal data to the almighty American government for the privilege of visiting America. Thank you Brasil for standing up and retaliating to America's xenophobia!

...When we all know that none of these extreme "security" measures can read people's minds or motivations, nor prevent real terrorists from crossing miles of porous border of any country.

:ooh:

[Blacksheep]

Certainly fingerprinting foreigners doesn't do much for security. Effective covert action would give the US public the impression that nothing is being done. Creating a huge fuss by inconveniencing foreign visitors, despite being totally useless at preventing terrorism, at least gives some sense that the administration is doing something useful to protect the public. A false sense of security. The US remains just as un-protected as it was before 9/11 and it is just a matter of time before the next atrocity occurs. Towards the end of the presidential election campaign would seem a likely time - an attempt to influence the result, as with the Madrid atrocities in Spain - and it will most likely be carried out by people who have been living quietly in the US for several years without arousing any suspicion.

Covert operations are the only effective way of dealing with terrorism. In Britain, as a result of 30 years of terrorism, Big Brother is watching. The movements of individual UK residents can be followed on video wherever they go. Journies are tracked by monitoring which mobile phone antennae the target's phone is linked to. Mobile phone traffic is routinely monitored by GCHQ, and purchases of fertilizer and other chemicals capable of being used to make explosives are recorded and reported. The general public are barely aware of these things around them, but don't imagine that the recent arrests of terrorist suspects were just a case of the police striking it lucky...

[His dudeness]

GlueBall has a point here....

To me, taking fingerprints is for criminals.
For the time beeing, I consider myself not to be one.

After years of arguments, I had my Boss agreeing on FS Training.
Only FS for our A/C is in the US of A. Since I don´t hold a current rating above 12500 lbs, I´d have to give my fingerprints in advance and in the States - not in an embassy. Means 2 flights to the US. Boss said no, he won´t pay for this stupidity.
If I had a TR above 12500lbs, no advance fingerprinting would be required - presumably the 767´s were below 12500 ?

I think, the US citizens should get EXACTLY the same treatment we get - and It won´t do security any good.
It would just show the US public : "Hey you might be the rulers of the world, but there is still some resistence"

But I fear none of the EU Governments have the backbone to show Georgieboy where to stop it.

[Cyclic Hotline]

Although I agree entirely that it is a serious hassle for visitors to the US;


These prohitive immigration procedures are worth nothing (because no terrorist will walk in that way),are planned and executed in a purely schematic way and harm the US economy the most.


This is precisely the point of the exercise.

Now they will have to figure out how to get in!

[Techman]

And as any Mexican can tell you, that is just so difficult.:rolleyes:

[Cyclic Hotline]

Yeah, a non-Mexican at the border.

He'll never stand out in the crowd!;)

[BlueEagle]

I hope you are all still around to comment when the USA can positively say that its photographing/fingerprinting procedure has led to the capture of terrorists or the prevention of a terrorist act.

In this day and age we all have to sacrifice a little if we want to stay safe and alive, it is just the way things are.

[mustafagander]

This fingerprinting/photographing by US immigration agents is just so much B/S. It may make the plebs feel that they're being protected, but it really is useless. This afternoon I'll be off to LAX with (I expect) about 300 pax. The great majority of them who are non US citizens will be on the visa waiver programme and will not have any checks other than the normal passport photo check. On the other hand, the crew who all have been security cleared by the US authorities and hold current US visas will be fingerprinted and photographed at the immigration barrier. This certainly makes the USA much more secure. What a load of :mad:

[BlueEagle]

If they are on the visa waiver programme then a lot is already known about them and this information is forwarded to the USA before their aircraft arrives. Not BS at all really.

[FarQ2]

Well it's just another example of how much the good old US of A is moving into the stone age.

It's just like just after 9/11 a knee jerk reaction with little thought put into it. This fingerprinting and video exercise is now unleased on the remaining 27 visa free countries because no one can get the new ultra security type passports issued to all in the required 2 yr timeframe.

It's what you expect from an myoptic country that runs around spruking "God Bless America" and has the audacity to print "In God We Trust" on it's bank notes. That wasn't much good to you on 9/11 unfortunately.

A damn good shake up of your foreign policy over the last 50yrs would go a long way to solving your terrorist problems that you have brought on yourselves where ever you go in the world.

I pity you people as I'm damned if I would want to be a target all over the planet as you are because of your moronic :mad: politicians and there policies.

I like a lot of others will now leave the good old USA of the travel itinerary, and I'm damn glad I don't have to work through the place.

Wrong move guys :hmm:

[SNNEI]

Evening all,

Firstly, may I say loud and clear that I am not anti-American. Far from it. But I will say that I for one will not be travelling to the U.S.A now having been planning a trip there for over a year.

I will not allow myself to be treated like a criminal in this manner when I have done nothing wrong. Yes, you Americans have a right to know who is entering your country. You get that information when you scan the machine readable passport I had to get to be allowed into your country. (It was either that or a Visa) You also get it from the lengthy forms to be filled in at U.S immigration pre-inspection in Dublin or Shannon Airports.

What I am not prepared to give is a form of identification only used in democratic countries when someone is arrested by the police. Who is to stop the U.S government and other governments from collecting these finger prints? They (and I include the governement of my own country here) do not have a right to that.

Most ironically of all, U.S tourists have been extremely inconvenienced at having the same thing done to them by Brazilian Immigration officers. So why the double standard?

Again, I re-iterate that I am not anti-American. You have a right to know who is coming into your country. You have a right to protect your country, but is this not a step too far? How much does it really further the cause of your nation's security?

And, if there are enough people who think similar to me and who will not be travelling becuase of this, how is it going to hurt your airline industry. I presume all who contribute here are the employees of, or supporters of, said industry?

[whatsarunway]

SSSSHhhhhhhh, we're neutral.

[SNNEI]

Hi,

I said I was not anti-American.... I am very much anti Bush! ;)

Oh, and might I also say I too hope that we are all around when this new measure is proven to have prevented an attack: because that day will be a bloody long time coming.

Do not allow your fears to be manipulated like this: This is far more to do with U.S Immigration policy than security. It\'s unfortunate that 9/11 and it\'s 3000 victims have been used so shamlessly to introduce such measures and all in the name of supposed security.

[Slim20]

I haven't been to the US since I was doing flight training/hours building.

I and a group of friends used to hire some C152s and stooge around Florida in the middle of the night. We used to chat on the open 123.45 frequency.

One night we overheard a sizeable contingent of Arabic speakers doing pretty much what we were doing. After monopolising the freq for about 5 mins they all bogged off and we didn't hear them again. One of our guys quipped in the usual unenlightened fashion that they were planning their next jihad. Ha ha ha!

Well about a year later we had 9/11. After the various investigations revealed the timescale involved, it is stretching the grounds of probability that we had overheard some of those very guys chatting whilst flying, but if it wasn't them then the 9/11 hijackers would have been in a very similar situation.

They were there legitimately, free to fly, and you couldn't stop them being there. Fingerprinting and photographing people entering the country just means it will be easier to identify them after the fact. It clearly will not stop them entering the country - as already pointed out, most of the terrorists to strike on US soil were first-time offenders and not likely to trigger any security alerts.

This is a shot in the foot by the US. Short of building a wall around the country, I don't know anything else that could be more damaging to their tourist economy in the future as a long-term policy.

Besides, if US sky marshals and congressmen will keep leaving guns lying around airports, who cares anyway?

[radeng]

Interesting

From the UK Daily Telegraph 23 April

"Strict new security and visa rules put in place since the September 11 attacks have triggered a 30 per cent drop in overseas visitors to the United States, the Bush administration has announced.

This has dealt a major blow to the tourist industry and US universities, among other sectors, said Colin Powell, the secretary of state.



He appeared on Capitol Hill to urge Congress to extend by two years a deadline for Britain and other trusted allies to produce ultra-high-tech "biometric" passports.

If Congress does not extend the deadline - set for October - millions of Britons face an expensive and time-consuming procedure of applying for a visa, just to visit America on a family holiday. Last year 3.9 million Britons visited, making Britain easily the country's biggest tourist customer.

Mr Powell told the House judiciary committee: "The overall statistic is we're down 30 per cent since 2001. That's significant. That's a lot of money, it's a lot of people."

He warned Congress that people would soon start voting with their feet. Mr Powell read from a letter, sent by the president of Harvard University, describing how a Chinese PhD student who travelled home for a family wedding then took months to secure a visa to return to Harvard.

"People aren't going to take that for very long, and when the word gets out to others, they are going to start going elsewhere," Mr Powell said.

The October deadline relates to a congressional decision to toughen up the long-standing scheme under which tourists from Britain and 26 other nations can enter America by simply filling out a green visa-waiver form as they fly across the Atlantic.

Congress ordered that the visa-waiver scheme be reserved for travellers carrying ultra-secure new passports containing "biometric" data - a digital photograph or fingerprint embedded in a computer chip.

British, US and continental European officials have all warned Congress that the technology for such biometric passports is not ready and no country will make the October deadline.

In an attempt to reassure Congress, the Bush administration recently ordered that visa-waiver tourists will have to be photographed and fingerprinted on entering the United States. After Sept 30, British visitors will be photographed as they stand at the immigration counter, and will have their fingerprints digitally scanned.

It seems likely that some sort of extension will be agreed, if not two years. Otherwise, millions of British tourists face having to apply in person at US missions for visas, simply to take family holidays.

Leading Republicans made clear that the visa-waiver scheme has become the latest casualty of souring US relations with Europe, and in particular France.

James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the powerful judiciary committee, said the premise that visa-waiver allies could be trusted "may have been true in years past, but it's questionable today".

He recalled the recent Madrid bombings, which he said appeared to have been carried out by Spanish passport holders, who could have entered the United States under the visa-waiver scheme.

In February, he complained, "thousands of blank French passports were stolen from a delivery truck, the third such theft in less than a year".



So it is being realised..........at last