Tougher measures for Canadians with visas to the US

Reba
Moderator


Canuck in NC

Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 967
Location: North Carolina

Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:36 am

 

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"Canadians entering the United States with visas will have to scan 10 digits rather than just two under a newly expanded security program launching later in November.

Under the current US-VISIT program, Canadians and others entering the United States on visas must scan both index fingers and have a digital photograph taken by a border official.

Canadians engaged to marry U.S. citizens must also go through the process, and the U.S. has announced that Canadian students and nurses working in the U.S. will also be subject to the screening.

Washington now plans to install a new line of 10-fingerprint scanners at all 311 Canada-U.S. ports of entry by the end of 2008.

The stepped-up biometrics measures begin Nov. 29 at Washington's Dulles International Airport."

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/11/21/f.nts-border.html
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Steven
CanuckAbroad VIP



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 739
Location: Calgary

Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 9:35 am

 

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Sieg Heil.

This is such a joke, I'm sure that fingerprint scanner doesn't get usable fingerprints most of the time. I've been fingerprinted several times for FD-258s by police agencies in the US and they take ages to make sure the prints are legible on the cards.
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CanuckAbroad
Site Admin


Back in Victoria after living in Budapest

Joined: 04 Mar 2003
Posts: 481
Location: Victoria

Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:12 am

 

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I'm not surprised about this. It's only a matter of time before you need to get fingerprinted just as a tourist crossing the border. Canada is currently the only country exempt from that.SO annoying. Whenever I cross with my fiance, who is Swedish (but a permanent resident) we have to pull over, get out, pay $6 and she has to be photographed and fingerprinted. I'm curious if this data actually really does help security, or if it's just an excuse so politicians can say it does.

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Steven
CanuckAbroad VIP



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 739
Location: Calgary

Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:39 am

 

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I think pretty much 90% of "public safety" legislation is just an excuse for politicians to be shown to be "doing something about it".

I frankly feel like puking when I watch Lou Dobbs on CNN. I don't give a damn if he is married to a Mexican, the guy is a facist.

Sometimes I really wonder what planet some US politicians are orbiting, they seem to often fail to understand (as Sir Jeremy Greenstock put it the other day, very cleverly) that the US may be the most powerful country in the world but the relative power of the US is declining rapidly.

Essentially the US is just another country and being the US doesn't make them right.

So what we end up with is a bunch of US politicians whinging on about NAFTA and Canadian border security and failing utterly to understand the need for free trade and free movement of people and goods.

This move to sell oil in Euros instead of US dollars might finally make them wake up to the problem because imports into the US are artificially cheaper because the USD is a reserve currency for most countries that send goods to the US, so they are happy to be paid in US dollars - not for much longer. When they face the same same currency problems Canada, etc. face then all the ineffiencies in the US immigration/customs system will suddenly become glaringly apparent as prices in the shops go up rapidly.

I can tell you now that fingerprints are highly overrated for identification purposes as I used to work in law enforcement and based on latent prints it was very hard to identify someone even from extremely carefully done prints professionally done on people arrested and processed at police stations. To suggest this US-VISIT system has usable prints in it is frankly a joke and this is no doubt why they are going to all digits in the vain hope of getting information that is marginally more useful. This is why DNA is becoming more and more prevalent as an identification method. (I bet you serious money that precisely zero people who have been put into the US-VISIT system have been identified in relation to a criminal investigation based on their fingerprints being in that system).

I find the US land border checks especially on Canadians totally incredible, to be honest. In the EU there aren't even any internal border controls except in the UK. I feel like I'm stepping back into the 1950s whenever I visit the US with all the passport stamping and paperwork filling.

The whole lot should be abolished and Canadians should be able to live and work in the US freely and vice versa. And what's so sad about it is that the Americans actually think they're so much better than Canada economically that it would be a disaster to do that, and the Canadian Govt. actually buys into that nonsense and is worried about everyone moving south!

And now the Canadian Govt. is proposing an internal free market inside Canada and abolishing internal border controls between Provinces! Oh my God, it's just a joke.
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Steve.

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Reba
Moderator


Canuck in NC

Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 967
Location: North Carolina

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:19 am

 

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Quite a lot of Americans are still under the impression that all the 19 hijackers entered the US through Canada so they think that 9/11 was Canada's fault.

On that day the media was n and on about "they must have come from Canada! That other guy did!" and of course when it was found that none of them did in fact come from Canada, there was of course no retraction, and they in fact hardly mentioned it in passing nor said "whoops, we really were just talking out of our asses". Even US politicians continue the myth and blame Canada. Now they can say "hey! We're doing something about it! We're annoying the crap out of each and every Canadian who crosses the border! Sooner or later, they'll just stop coming here and leave us alone!"

Next, the North American Wall Project will start on the northern border. And they'll probably want cheap Canadian soft lumber to build it!
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Steven
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Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 739
Location: Calgary

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:14 pm

 

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I've got to say that everyone might think that George W is hopeless, but I do think he's pretty shrewd on immigration. He was pushing pretty hard for immigration reform, and now it's been defeated the White House just seems to taking the attitude that Congress can go ahead and dig themselves a nice hole, with stupid proposals to build walls and try and deport several million people. This whole fuss about driver's licenses is another recent example.

He used to be the Governor of Texas so he knows full well how important immigrant labour is, plus he knows that Mexico is an important trading partner as it is by far the most important trading partner with Texas.

My personal take on the whole thing for several years now is that by 2015, with one or two holdouts the whole EU will be using the Euro, and by 2015 with three or four exceptions every European country will be in the EU. And by then virtually all barriers to free movement of goods, services and labour will have been removed and they'll be moving towards tax harmonisation as well.

At the moment the EU is pretty good on labour and movement of goods, but the banking sector still needs to be sorted out and transnational availability of utilities.

Anyway, once all of that happens, the Euro will become the strongest currency in the world and thus the most important reserve currency.

The only way the US will be able to maintain its economic strength will be to have some sort of North American Union that includes Canada, Mexico and central america. The State Dept. knows this, hence CAFTA recently.

It will also mean much freer movement of labour and goods and services. Whether it will ever get as free as the EU I don't know, but economic realities will force the US to change their tune sooner or later, regardless of what the dipshits in Congress are saying at the moment.
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