HOMELAND SECURITY: Digital fingerprinting arrives at border

INTERNATIONAL FALLS, Minn. - Federal officials hope digital fingerprinting technology installed at the border crossing here this week will both make the border more secure and speed the process of entering the country.

Visitors to the United States passing through the border crossing at International Falls, and 49 other busy Canadian crossings, will be fingerprinted. Those prints will be cross-checked against databases of known criminals and terrorists.

The process will apply to anyone who needs a visa to enter the United States, which means Canadians won't be scanned because they don't need visas to enter the country.

North Dakota border crossings will have the fingerprinting technology installed by the end of 2005, said Anna Hinken, a spokeswoman for the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, or US-VISIT.

Ken Henrickson, chief inspector for the Customs and Border Protection agency, said the new process takes just a few minutes. The old system required people to show their passports and visas and fill out immigration forms.

Inspectors would then have to verify the person's identity. The whole process took about 15 minutes, Henrickson said.

"It's going to cut down the traveler's time that they're in the building getting processed," said Henrickson. "It's going to help us, and I think the traveling public will be pleased."

He estimated that only a few thousand of the about 2 million people who came into the United States through International Falls every year will get fingerprinted. Most visitors at the crossing are Canadians.

Earlier this month, Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security, said additional technology including motion-detecting sensors and land- and air-based surveillance of deserted stretches will also improve border security.

Hutchinson announced the security upgrades in Minneapolis at a conference of law enforcement officials from eight Midwestern and western states and Canada.

The fingerprinting technology used already at airports and seaports will be extended to all land border crossings by the end of 2005, Hutchinson said.

The 5,525-mile Canadian border has one U.S. border guard for every 10 watching the Mexican border, Hutchinson said. His department has given grants to pay border guards overtime to increase patrols, resulting in a "historic level of security for the northern border," he said.

Unmanned aerial vehicles now being used to patrol the Mexican border may be added on the Canadian border, he said. But there's no substitute for people who live near the border who spot and report suspicious activities, he said.

All the new technology has meant an uptick in employment in International Falls. The border crossing now employs about 50 people, more than twice what it did a few years ago.

Paul Nevanen, director of the Koochiching County Economic Development Authority, said he hopes those jobs are only the beginning.

"That has been the one thing that has created some benefit here in jobs, and good paying jobs, are those federal jobs at the border," he said. "And it has allowed some people, local people, to move back. So those are the kinds of jobs that people can raise a family on."