Our View: Creating more border disorder

In what we hope is its last great act of lunacy, Michael Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security has announced it will subject all non-Americans, including those who have been permanent legal residents for decades, to biometric tracking.

The tracking is part of the US-VISIT program that began in 2003. Various elements of the program have been delayed because the technology simply hasn't existed to make them feasible. That fact hasn't stopped other parts, and Chertoff has largely ignored concerns and protests from border officials, who surely have a better grasp of the logistics of crossing the border than he does.

In fact, Chertoff himself announced two years ago that exit tracking would not be implemented in 2007, as originally scheduled, because officials at our ports of entry said they simply couldn't do it. His ruling this month reverses that decision and actually expands the program to include biometric tracking of all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent legal residents, regardless of how long they have lived in this country.

All foreign citizens will now be subject to electronic fingerprint scans every time they enter and every time they leave the country. This might not seen like much of a problem, but for workers near the border it could prove counterproductive. A green card holder who lives in El Paso, Texas, for example, but works at a Mexican maquiladora in Ciudad Juarez, for example, will have to go through the process twice a day, going to and from work, even though he or she crosses daily and is well known to inspectors on the bridges.

A family of six people could be held at the bridge for half an hour every time they cross, just so their crossings can be recorded.

Officials have said the process doesn't take much time, estimating about five minutes per person, per crossing. That might not seem like much, but at five minutes per person only 12 will make it across the bridge in an hour. The Rio Grande Valley Partnership in south Texas reports 1.95 million bridge crossings into Mexico during the month of October, the most recent report posted on is Web site; that averages out to more than 65,000 crossings per day, and it doesn't even include return trips back into this country.

Under ideal conditions the process can be relatively fast, but immigration officials have said they can also take much longer than five minutes per person. The electronic equipment to record fingerprints must be sensitive to read the tiny grooves on fingertips. Many people become nervous during the process, even without cause, and nervous trembling that the operators can't even see can be enough to prevent reliable readings, according to DHS workers who actually take those readings.

"The idea that lawful residents, immigrants who have been living in the United States for years, will be subject to fingerscans and other biometric data collection procedures when traveling to and from the United States is simply wrong and borders on the absurd," Charles H. Kuck, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said in a prepared statement.

Kuck noted that no assessment has been made of the cost of implementing the new policy or its effect on the operations at our ports of entry. Some likely will argue that cost doesn't matter, making sure the borders are secure is what counts, but politics is all about what is practical and there is a limit to what Americans are willing to pay for a program whose benefits are unproven.

The original premise of US-VISIT, as it was sold to the American people, was that it would help track those who came to this country on short-term visas - visitors. Legal permanent residents aren't visitors - in most cases they are our neighbors. Their work, taxes and other contributions to their communities has earned them better treatment than this.

Our country is not under martial law. And before George W. Bush took office it was seen throughout the world as a country that respected the rights and freedoms of all people, regardless of nationality. If Congress doesn't scrap this newest edict from DHS when it reconvenes in January, it should be one of the first acts of Chertoff's successor, Janet Napolitano.