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Most Irish avoid fingerprint check

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

“The new visa clearance system has been running smoothly and doesn’t affect many of our passengers,” Brian Murphy, the airline’s vice president for sales marketing North America, said.
However, the new security checks, being carried out under the U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology, or USVISIT, are being applied to the pilots flying the carrier’s aircraft into U.S. airports.
“The checks do apply to pilots, cabin crew and also students holding U.S. visas,” Murphy said.
Most U.S.-bound Irish travelers do not have to comply with the new digital fingerprinting and facial photography requirements because Ireland is one of 27 countries currently included in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program.
Those who are required to submit to the checks are doing so at the U.S. immigration pre-clearance stations at Dublin and Shannon airports.
The technology used includes an inkless box that digitally scans the prints of both index fingers and a computer camera that simultaneously takes a photo of the individual’s face.
The process is part of a general tightening up of U.S. border controls that has accelerated since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
By October of this year, travelers from Ireland and the other visa waiver program countries will be required to carry machine readable passports.
Roughly 90 percent of Irish passports in current circulation are machine readable, but an additional new U.S. rule will require that Irish and other passports from visa waiver nations contain computer chips carrying facial recognition data.
The machine-readable requirement was due to be implemented on Oct. 1, 2003 but was postponed for 12 months.
The closer scrutiny of arriving passengers will also be applied increasingly to travelers leaving the U.S. and this has prompted widespread concern among advocates for undocumented Irish immigrants living in the U.S.
Many undocumented who might have traveled to Ireland for the recent Christmas holiday did not do so out of concern that, once out of the U.S., they would not have been able to return.

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