U.S. begins screening immigrants at busiest land crossings

The Homeland Security Department announced Monday that a new immigrant tracking system has been expanded to the nation's busiest land ports of entry.

The U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program began operating at the 50 busiest land crossings on Dec. 29, according to department officials. The system was implemented at 115 airports and 15 seaports last year.

"The effectiveness of US VISIT has meant that we have been able to deploy the technology on schedule while meeting our goals of enhanced security and the facilitation of legitimate travel and trade," said Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for border and transportation security. "This is a step toward our vision of creating a 21st century border and immigration management system."

US VISIT was created after 9/11 to meet congressional mandates for developing an electronic immigrant entry and exit tracking system using biometric and biographic information. The program requires visitors with nonimmigrant visas to give border inspectors two fingerprints and a digital photo, along with their biographical and travel information. The information is entered into a database and compared to terrorist and criminal watch lists. All foreigners who now come to the land crossings and plan to travel beyond the border area or stay in the United States longer than 30 days must submit their information into US VISIT.

The US VISIT contract is the largest that DHS has awarded to date, valued at up to $10 billion over five years with five one-year options after that. DHS awarded the prime contract to Accenture LLP, whose parent company, Accenture Ltd., is headquartered in Bermuda.

US VISIT is expected to expand to 165 land crossings by the end of 2005, said DHS spokeswoman Kimberly Weissman.

To date, about 17 million foreign visitors have been processed through US VISIT. Using the system, authorities have been able to arrest or deny admission to 372 criminals or immigration violators, including federal penitentiary escapees, convicted rapists, drug traffickers, individuals convicted of manslaughter and credit card fraud, immigration violators and individuals attempting visa fraud, according to the department.

Congress appropriated $340 million for the program in fiscal 2005. Weissman said the department has submitted its spending plan for US VISIT to Congress for approval. She did not know when the plan might be approved.

"We're still working on some clarifications with it," she said.

Even travelers from 27 countries that are part of the U.S. Visa Waiver program must input their information into US VISIT. Under the program, travelers from the countries are able to enter the United States without immigrant visas. Twenty-two of the countries are in Europe. The others are Australia, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore.

Congress, however, granted a one-year extension for visa-waiver countries to begin issuing machine-readable passports. Under the new deadline, those countries have until Oct. 26 to comply.