[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/national/05IMMI.html?ex=1023854400&en=4cbc784b3317ba49&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1]U.S. Will Seek to Fingerprint Visas' Holders[/url]

[i]June 4, 2002:
The Justice Department will propose new regulations this week requiring tens of thousands of Muslim and Middle Eastern visa holders to register with the government and be fingerprinted, administration officials said today.  

The initiative, the subject of intense debate within the administration, is designed for "individuals from countries who pose the highest risk to our security," including most visa holders from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and many other Muslim nations, officials said.

More than 100,000 foreigners, including students, workers, researchers and tourists, all foreigners from designated countries who do not hold green cards, would probably be covered by the plan, an official said.
[/i]


[b]It's about F@CKING TIME!![/b]

[i]But some civil liberties and Arab-American groups expressed outrage at the proposed requirements, arguing that such a policy was a blatant example of racial and ethnic profiling.

[/i][b]C@ckS@ckingMuthaF@cking LIBERAL SH!TBAGS!! We are at [red]WAR[/red] with MoslemMaggots and they are RIGHT HERE in our country!! F@CK the ACLU!! Exterminate them!![/b]
[i]
"What's the logic of this?" said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Anyone who's truly dangerous is not going to show up to be registered."

[/i][b]Then just round them up and DEPORT THEIR ASSES!![/b]
[i]
James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a policy organization, said the registration plan would be "an overtly discriminatory, inefficient and ineffective way to deal with the problem."

"This is targeting a group of people, the overwhelming majority of whom are innocent, but whose lives will be turned upside down," Mr. Zogby added.

[/i][b]Fine. Fingerprint ALL non-citizens on their way OUT OF THE COUNTRY as we DEPORT THEIR ASSES!![/b]
[i]
"The message it sends is that we're becoming like the Soviet Union, with people registering at police stations."

[/i][b]NO d!ckhead, the USSR fingerprinted THEIR OWN PEOPLE!! We are fingerprinting FOREIGNERS who are MORE LIKELY to be TERRORISTS!![/b]
[i]
The authority for proposing the new registration requirements rests in a long-dormant provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, administration officials said.

A section of that law requires all foreign visa holders to register with the government if they remain in the United States for 30 days or longer.

The law also required the fingerprinting of virtually all foreigners who were not permanent residents, except for diplomats.

The law remained on the books, but enforcement fell off in the early 1980's when the volume of visa holders climbed rapidly and the immigration service's budget and staffing dropped.

"By the early 1980's, the sheer volume of the effort combined with a lack of funding resulted in the practice being discontinued," said one administration official.

In 1979, the same year as the beginning of the Iranian hostage crisis, Iranian students were required to register with the government.

After the attacks last year, most visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Libya were fingerprinted as they entered the United States.

But the terrorist attacks had given fresh impetus to a much broader program. One administration official said the new registration proposal, which Justice officials planned to brief to Congress on Wednesday and announce later this week, would give the government a leg up on identifying the highest-risk foreign visitors now living in the United States.

[/i]

and wouldn't that be a good indicator of those that should be ejected first?

Reading that lawyer's asinine arguements makes me think that maybe, just maybe, we ARE too stupid to survive as a culture.

[i]"What's the logic of this?" said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Anyone who's truly dangerous is not going to show up to be registered."[/i]




I wonder if she thinks the same about "gun-registration"

Seems like a great idea to me.  Hell, I wouldn't even let them in the country.
Keving67

What do you think Ashcroft will do after getting this "inch."  He'll ask for another and another and another.  How long do you think it will be before he'll want to include gun owners?  You don't give an inch to a man that doesn't believe in the Bill of Rights.z

They should be made to give DNA samples along with fingerprints before they reach our soil. If they refuse then they can't come. I don't care what is says on the Statue of Liberty, wartime allows for a different set of standards and policies.

Well, if the laws is all ready there, it's a mute point.  No sence of arguing over it.

Granted, if I was entering country X and said I would be there on business/school and they said they wanted to finger print me, I might feel offended.  Granted if you have nothing to hide and the country you visit requires this .... oh well.

Good Idea however, the liberals will claim it's unfair to profile and the true terrorist out to do harm ain't going to show up to be fingerprinted!

WooHoo!

[beer]

Anyone who's truly dangerous is not going to show up to be registered."

Uh isnt that what we have been saying for years about gun registration but no one wants to hear it?

I wonder if she thinks the same about "gun-registration"

vere are you prints comrade

I am willing to have EVERYONE fingerprited. In Italy we just have issued such a law for work permits for foreigners.
Unfortunately my wife maybe should have to be registered.
If your wife is still not US citizien, would you like that police will take her fingerprints?

I am willing to make the police to take mine if they take her ones...

Delete the "maybe" and you would be very close to reality.

Stay tuned for Act 2 of "Islamic Gentlemen Come To America" coming to a major population center near you!

 [img]http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/sadness.gif[/img]

Apples and Oranges. During WWII those of Japanese descent were no more untrustworthy than those of German descent. It was just easier to identify them. But both groups where U.S. citizens born and bred in the U.S.

We are talking about foreigners visiting/living in the U.S.

Is this unfair? Go to Saudi Arabia and see what you have to do to work or study there.

I think finger printing is reasonable. Not to mention, that it has ALREADY BEEN DONE IN THE PAST and no one thought a second time about it.

-legrue

WTC, Pentagon, Shoebomber... those made it necessary to look for potential terrorists on our soil.

How does positively identifying potential terrorist [u]non-citizens[/u] equate with living in a "police state"?

How in the world did you infer that??



How does positively identifying foreigners on U.S. soil tie to the rights granted U.S. citizens? And if they ARE tied, how does positively identifying them interfere with
"...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
???

To keep things fair lets just require that all visa apllications include fingerprints.

Simply fingerprint every non-US citizen upon (or before) entry into the United States.

I believe uniformity would remove bias.
-----------------------------------------

Gentle people, I submit to you that we 'cannot' seal our borders.  We have long borders to both the north and south and thousands of coast line miles.  Can we do better ?  Yes.  Can we effectively seal our borders ?  I believe that answer is no.

To the best of my knowledge, only that group was interned. If you have other information, please quote source. The internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during WWII is confirmed historical fact. Next subject please.





Knowing the Declaration, it also meant, all white land owners. Non-land owners, women, and blacks did not have the same rights under the law at the time.

That being said, you STILL haven't addressed the SECOND QUESTION!!!  HOW DOES POSITIVELY IDENTIFYING FORIEGNERS ON US SOIL INTERFERE WITH THEIR RIGHT TO "LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PERSUIT OF HAPPINESS"??

[size=3]to the damn shitstain LIBERALS on this forum:[/size=3]

[size=5]WE ARE AT [red]WAR![/red] THEY ARE IN THE COUNTRY WAITING FOR THE ORDER TO KILL YOU AND ME![/size=5]
i can not believe some of your responses. they are after NON-CITIZEN MUSLIMS !

your [size=6]political correctness[/size=6] makes me want to pull my fucking hair out.  if youre a foreigner and this offends you get the hell out of the country. if youre an American, how about showing some support for what the Administration is trying to do?

This is not new.....It's like the liberals want all of us gun owners to register and fingerprinted.

My problem is this:

In reading one of the articles about the proposal, it seemed they were using the foreigner's country (as in where is their passport from?) as the focus for the requirement.

This will mean that terrorists will start coming in with genuine or phony passports from other counrtires than the ones on the list of bad countries.

So actually for it to work, they would have to use racial / ethnic profiling, whatever country the person is "from".

Of course we don't need to worry about any U.S. [b]citizens[/b] of middle-eastern descent.  [rolleyes]  After all, if they became citizens, they said the pledge.  Or if they were born citizens, their parents did. Probably. And they were sincere, too.[%|]

[b][red]Bzzzzzt.[/red][/b]

WRONG!!

It's NOTHING like the liberals.

Liberals want to register [b]US CITIZENS[/b].

This action does not infringe on the rights of ANY US CITIZENS!!

Do you understand the legal difference between a CITIZEN and a NON-CITIZEN??

Sheeesh!! What's WRONG with you people!! [whacko]

Post from tatjana -

Refresh my memory if I'm wrong, but throughout Europe having your Passport with you at all times is pretty mandatory.

It seems they even collect them at the hotel front desk. I mean, that's the way it used to be!

So how could fingerprinting foreigners, who are simply guests in this country after all, be such a huge problem for anyone?

Going by this definition there are very, very few countries in this world that are [u]not[/u] 'police states' then!

The first duty of a nation is to protect its citizens, AT THE COST OF WHATEVER IT TAKES TO DO SO!

If we are wrong, then we are wrong for all the right reasons.

And the United States, with John Ashcroft as the Attorney General, is light years ahead of any other country on the planet in terms of personal freedom.

[u]Unless[/u] you consider free and unfettered drug use to be the [i][b]sine qua non[/b][/i] of personal freedom.

If so, then Switzerland, Holland and a few others beat the US hands down!

Eric The(Disturbed)Hun[>]:)]

Agreed...

When I go to say Taiwan or Great Britain I understand I've left the U.S. and my constitution behind.  I understand that I am a guest in their country and am required to conform to their laws.

If told I would need to be fingerprinted, I would still go as my intention is to follow their law.

Absolutely!

If I were an American in Pakistan, and hundreds of American terrorists had infiltrated Pakistan and murdered 3,000 Pakistanis, I'd SURE AS HELL understand Pakistan's need to defend itself even if that meant it would create a minor "inconvenience" for me.

As a GUEST (who would obviously raise legitimate suspicions there) I'd do whatever they wanted no-questions-asked or else I'd leave the country.

And I wouldn't be so pig-headedly [b]arrogant[/b] as to call it a "police state" either!!

If we could legally exclude these people from our country altogether, it seems a little silly for anyone to complain about some conditions we put on their entry.  Would those complaining be happier if we banned these folks altogether?  That is certainly our perogative.  These foreigners still have the choice of coming here or staying home.

Note that many of the rights in the Constitution - and those in the 4th Amendment in particular - only apply to "the people," in other words the body politic.  These people are not citizens.

The fear of this leading to the fingerprinting of gun owners is unfounded.  A fingerprinting is a search or siezure, and there are constitutional protections for cizitens.  This is not the case for foreign nationals.  Some American citizens are already required to provide fingerprints, and this has not lead to the Federales requiring the fingerprinting of gun owners.  Have gun owners lost their rights because felons, social workers, cops, and lawyers have had to be fingerprinted?  You have to admit, there is good reason to get fingerprints from such people.  Certainly getting the fingerprints of Muslim foreign nationals is at least as justified.  After all, social workers did not kill 3,000 people in cold blood last year.  Non-citizen Muslims - almost all of them legally in this country - did.

PC has so infected our culture that it seems that we, as John Derbyshire put it in a recent article, would rather be dead than rude.  Not me.

Why is this so unreasonable: [b]is designed for "individuals from countries who pose the highest risk to our security," including most visa holders from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and many other Muslim nations, officials said.[/b]

Our "guests" can fly in whenever they feel like it and get lost without the government having a clue as to where they are. Obviously some here think this is wonderful and to do otherwise would be a violation of all we hold dear. Please!



Why is it "ineffective" to filter out 97% of the population for purposes like visiting here or airport security checks? Because Zogby says so. Of course he never goes into details as to why that would be; just keeps repeating "ineffective" on all the talk shows, like some mantra. It seems to me that the more you can narrow things down the easier the job is. This is the way with all police and security work.



You never know, the police state may end up coming to you! Better to stay and have some voice, no matter how small. No way in hell that I'm going to end up as some anti-liberal version of Gore Vidal...



Whoa! Obviously we do think differently but I still have no idea why you pulled those EXTREME EXAMPLES of restricting a [u]citizen's[/u] freedom.

If this is too much to ask; to have some kind of system to track visitors to the United States, who are not working or going to school, then you must think that everyone and their crazy Jihadi cousin HAS A RIGHT TO BE HERE. They do not!



There were some Americans of German and Italian descent who were held during the war as well. Not 100,000 but in the thousands. This really has nothing to do with the proposed system.

I'm all for it.
I've been married to a Canadian for near 20 years now and if she had to get finger printed we'd consider it a very small price to pay.
If this even helps stop one terrorist incident it would be a damn cheap price.
I don't think that non citizens should have the same rights and privilages as us,my wife included.

I have a perfectly clean criminal record, but I have been finger printed many times.  Entry into the Army, various security clearances military and civilian, and for the Utah state CCW application.  Are foreigners more privileged than our own GIs?  Hell, even the banks in this state take a "touch signature" if you cash a check and they don't know you.  Finger printing foreigners?  BFD....  Watch-Six

I don't really see the value in getting fingerprints from these people.  What good will it do?  I think temporary visa holders from those countries should undergo a lot of scrutiny, but I would put fingerprinting lower on the list.  It's not like there's a database of Al Qaeda fingerprints or something.  Sure, a few of them have been arrested and fingerprinted around the world, and if the bureaucracies can get their databases synced up, we might be able to find one or two that way.  But likely we know where those guys are anyway, if they're not already in prison.  We should put other sorts of visa restrictions in place for countries such as Saudi Arabia rather than just relying on fingerprinting.

Boston:  I think the idea has merit because (1) you have to start building your database somewhere, (2) it is going to be a lot easier to track them down once they are here.  For instance, let say we let one of these guys in and later discover he is a threat.  If he already has gone underground and obtained fake ID, it is going to be a lot easier to round him up with a fingerprint.

You can forge/change your name:
Ali-Alhafaz Ramandan
Al-Hafaza Ralaman
Mohammed Al-Hafaz
Geraldo Rivera
Mohammed Al-Ramandan Hafaid

But once your name is matched to a fingerprint, that fingerprint will have to match that name always - regardless of what the "passport" or visa says.



REALLY?!

Huh, how do you know this?

Police state?  That would involve everyone, not just the shitbags that killed my fellow NYers and friends.  Take a look at my post on this thread, maybe that'll clear up any misgivings you might have about printing Muslims/Arabs.  When there is an identifiable  demographic of people who want to kill you and I, then identify them, watch them, catch them, kill them and move on to the next one.  

You can't bitch and moan about "Police State" problems if the enemy has already killed you, and I don't want the enemy to kill you, you look too good in leather and your ballistics expanations and tests are superb!  It would be too tragic a loss to lose Tatjana to a terrorist we might have been able to detect with prints!

ALL you Mofo's that keep saying that this passing is the worse thing since pickled pig feet, your argument never once states that you think finger printing the arabs is a bad thing, you keep bringing up how this is a "gateway" bill to more oppressing laws that will effect us Americans'.

Well that's a chance we have to take!
(after all, that's why we have the 2nd amendment, right?)

Requiring fingerprints not only is effective due to now putting physical blueprints with names and visa's, but also good as a anti-moral tool for us in this war.

If you were a terrorist coming to America, would you want a blueprint in your body in easy access files of your enemy?
Major deterrents.
Arming pilots would of been another one of those anti-moral strategies, but I don't want to get into the arming pilots topic cause that just gets me to heated.

I'm not saying it has no merit.  I'm just questioning whether it even does enough to protect our country to be worth pissing people off.  Surely there are many more effective things we could do.

Fingerprinting might work fairly well at identification with a closed population.  You fingerprint everybody and then you can identify them.  But our "problem" is that we can't go overseas and fingerprint the billion Muslims.  So when somebody comes to our door and says he is Akmed Hussein, what does taking his fingerprint do to prove/disprove that?  It's only worth something if someone else outside the U.S. had fingerprinted and tracked him before and knows something about his history.  I don't think that's likely to happen in many cases.  So we have fingerprints and a name which might very well be false.  Great.  In virtually all cases, that doesn't tell us any more about the person than we knew before.  We haven't "identified" anything.

The only other thing this could be used for is tracking the movements of these people within the U.S.  But we don't have system in place to do that, and there's no way we will.  Can you imagine asking for your fingerprint before you could get on a plane or a bus or a train?  And they would have to do it for everybody, citizens included, for it to be useful for tracking foreigners.  Otherwise they could just pretend to be citizens and avoid the fingerprint check.  Or maybe we should get a national ID card?!

Instead of trying measures like fingerprinting, we should do extensive profiling of Saudis and Pakistanis and Afghanis who want to visit here.  Make them undergo a thorough background check if they fit any of the terrorist indicators.  Don't just fingerprint them and feel good about how much your doing to fight terrorism when really it's not very much.

Ashcroft shouldn't have to finger print any of them, they should not let them in this country and should round up all the arabs and ship them back, thats my veiw. The only way to eliminate the problem is to eliminate the people who cause it. SEND EM BACK AND DON"T LET ANYMORE IN.