Department of Homeland Security Wants Fingerprints Taken from Foreign Travelers as They Leave the U.S.
March 18th, 2008I’m amazed that people with the resources to fly to the U.S. do so on purpose. It’s just mind boggling to me. I wonder, did foreigners go on holiday to Germany after Hitler came to power? This is an absolutely innocent question. I have no idea. I’m guessing that they did, back then, since millions of people are now willing to roll the dice on potentially winding up in the Homeland’s gulag system.
Via: USA Today:
Airlines are protesting a government plan that would require them to take fingerprints of foreign travelers as they fly out of the USA, saying it could create massive lines at airport check-in counters.
Congress has required that the 33 million foreigners a year coming into U.S. airports be fingerprinted when they arrive and leave the country but did not specify who should take the prints.
The Homeland Security Department, which currently fingerprints foreigners coming into U.S. airports, wants airlines to be responsible for taking fingerprints as these travelers leave.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) urged the White House to kill the plan. “This is a government function, not to be outsourced to the private sector,” said Ken Dunlap, security chief for IATA North America. The association represents 240 airlines worldwide.
The opposition could derail a key part of the Homeland Security Department’s effort to keep track of foreign visitors including suspected terrorists.
Another example of how becoming Jeebus Confederate America has really brought this country down. Tourism dollars bring, or brought, a lot of money into this country, and that’s being steadily flushed down the toilet now thanks to a lot of xenophobic paranoia. Why oh why didn’t we let the South secede? Now those miserable inbred fucks have turned the whole country into Badham County!
Yes – people did indeed travel to Germany in the “good old days”. Mervyn Peake (the writer/illustrator) and his wife spent time there. She wrote in her memoirs that she found the Nazis comical at the time, and felt very guilty that she hadn’t seen them for what they were.
Of course, many “sports fans” would have gone there for the 1936 Olympics.
Hm…staging the Olympics in a fascist country that’s murdering its own citizens. We’d never do something outrageous like that today, would we?
@ dermot
Yes! Of course, the 1936 Olympics. And Beijing… Holy shit.
@ Loveandlight
If you think that a bunch of hill billies are behind all of this, you pretty much couldn’t get it more wrong.
The reptiles are behind this.
Seriously though, I can see where the hillbilly inference can come from. I think what we’ve fundamentally dealing with here, and have throughout history, is a vast and sinister conspiracy of stupidity. An ignorant person will assign a 25% probability to four questions on a multiple choice exam, a stupid person will assume they know something even when they don’t have sufficient information, and will weigh their options according to their own hueristics and biases, doing sufficiently worse than they would if they were merely ignorant. Human history is a multiple choice exam that has scored an average of like, 13%, an F-, now we’re getting to the really hard questions at the end.
There’s only one Grand Canyon, only one Yosemite, only one Golden Gate Bridge, and unfortunately you have to come to America to see them. There are also some nice natural wonders in the German Alps. Eventually the Grand Canyon will be filled with junk and Yosemite will be lost in the tourist bus smog. If I were a foreigner, I’d want to visit the Grand Canyon and Yosemite before that happens. Can I help it if the Americans elect a ventriloquist’s dummy to be president?
L&L… Time to take some tranquilizers friend and relax. Last time I checked it was the stars and stripes, and not the stars and bars, flying over the white house with folks from Maine and Ivy League schools running the whole sad charade. Hillbillies prefer to be left alone to enjoy their moonshine rather than allow themselves to be some sort of sideshow for nosy “civilized” gun grabbing fascists.
The DHS, and quite obviously the majority of Kongress kritters who vomited this nonsense out, have absolutely no respect for decency or sober reflection. They’re merely power hungry party animals who know that the game has almost played itself out and that very soon there won’t be any need to pretend that they give a damn.
I can only hope that the coming Olympics has its’ version of Jesse Owens.
As for fingerprinting (departing) visitors still willing to travel to the U.S., isn’t it locking the barn door after the horses have got out? While its ludicrous to print them in any case, wouldn’t that be better served if they were fingerprinted in their own country before they entered the U.S.?
It beggars the imagination! Who the hell are these DHS idiots, anyway?
L&L… Time to take some tranquilizers friend and relax.
Quite right, Dr. F. I plan to do just that. Living in a grim urban blue-collar ghetto gets to one every now and then.
Two new adverts have been appearing on TV here in the UK promoting the USA as a tourist location (which is not common at all), but I’d sooner hitch hike across Siberia than go to the USA again. Alas, the EU is headed in the same direction with fingerprinting, etc. The lockdown is well on its way folks!
“Living in a grim urban blue-collar ghetto gets to one every now and then.”… L&L
LOL! I hear you.
When I hear about all the controls that gubmints want to impose I start to think about those less wealthy nations where they haven’t the resources to implement these draconian measures. Finding someplace like that, some peaceful village far away from the maddening crowd, or “officials”, is how I scope stuff out. If it’s too inconvenient for them to bother then you’ll be OK.