(no subject)

[bubosquared]

Well, crap.

Not that I think I won't get into the country, but this is likely going to delay my actually getting out of the airport, and to be honest, if I'd known of this before I booked my tickets (Virgin's website doesn't have any info on this) I don't know that I would've gone. (Yeah, call me paranoid, but dude, I'm from a country with mandatory ID cards, and yet I can't help feel weird about this.)

Comments

[wibbble]

You can get around it if your country issues biometric passports, IIRC. I hadn't realised it was expanded to the visa wavier program, though.

Looks like I'm not going to be meeting the in-laws, then, unless they come here.

[rsadelle]

I didn't vote for the bastard.

I've heard a lot of (valid) complaints about this from the privacy angle, but as far as I know, it hasn't been a hassle in terms of the time it takes. So worry only about the US government having your data, and not about getting out of the airport.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

wait, wait. countries (like yours and mine) whose nationals can normally ravel on the visa waiver program can enter w/o biometric passport, IF they have a (different thing) Machine readable passport. Presumably, I thnk, you do have one.

I went with mine and entered the country in SFO and the US Visit system was there (I saw it and saw it being used) but I didn't have to go through it because I was part of the visa-waived travelers-- did that change already?

One other thing, though: the system went really fast and didn't hold up *any one*. Seriously. The pace for the entrance queuing was the same as it's ever been.

[rane-ab.livejournal.com]

o_O I'm not sure what that link is about -- I scanned it fairly quickly, had no idea what it was supposed to be about (when I saw 'visa' I thought it was about the bankcards… *g*) -- but from the comments I gather you need to have your fingerprints taken. Iris prints, too, or is that just those biometric passports (what countries even have those??)? Big Brother, here we come. It reminds me freakily of Minority Report.

On the one hand, I suppose the fact that they take fingerprints shouldn't be too bad. After all, it's not like you, or I should I ever go there, are up to anything. And it would certainly help tracking down criminals. Yet the sheer thought of having my fingerprints taken makes me become queasy. It means that from now on, they can check whether you've been anywhere, if they really want to. I wonder if this'll create a trend of people wearing gloves everywhere. :p

It just seems like such a… suspicious thing to do. It's like stellated says -- like you're guilty until proven innocent. Are they taking the prints of every American, too? Because otherwise it just feels like they're discriminating foreigners and assuming everyone who isn't American is potentially evil. Way to increase the feeling of insecurity.