Foreigners entering the United States through J F Kennedy airport in New York will now be required to give the prints of all fingers instead of two index fingers sought previously. The new system, which is in its initial stages, is aimed at enhancing the security and efficiency in verifying the identities of the visitors' arriving at the airport, said US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The final evaluation of the new system will be made in December. If the new system passes the muster, all major airports in the US will implement the 10 fingerprint system for the non-US citizens to prevent terrorism threat through a better scrutiny of their identities.
The visitors' fingerprints are checked against the DHS records of immigration violators and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records of wanted persons and known or suspected terrorists. Only few categories, including diplomats and American citizens, are exempt from this process.
Under the new system, foreigner entering at the Kennedy airport would be required to place thumb impression on a white screen and then the four fingers, the same process is repeated with the other hand. The new scrutiny system is also expected to clear the holdups of the passengers more efficiently by clearing the security checks within 60 to 90 seconds.
Homeland Security Officials said though the old system of two fingers, introduced in 2004, detected more than 2,000 violators of immigration laws capturing some 90 million fingerprints but it also yielded some false matches. The new system's each image-capture units costs around $3,000. The total cost will be at around 280 million which would be paid for by the federal government.
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