Fingerprint & photo fiasco in Brazil here to stay

[imrthr]

The following article appeared today off Associated Press -

 

"January 10, 2004 at 15:35:11 PST

 

Brazil to Strengthen Fingerprint Policy

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

BRASILIA (AP) -

 

The Brazilian government will issue an executive order strengthening a new policy of fingerprinting all U.S. visitors in response to anti-terror measures enforced by the United States, news reports said.

 

The new Brazilian measures have delayed U.S. travelers in airports for up to nine hours since Jan. 1. A judge ordered them after the United States announced it would begin fingerprinting travelers arriving from other countries, including Brazil.

 

An order making the Brazilian measures an official government policy will be released on Monday, TV Globo quoted government officials as saying.

 

A draft of the one-page order was made public by Globo.com, the web site of Rio de Janeiro's O Globo newspaper. The order also sets up a team of officials from the justice and foreign ministries to evaluate the procedures."

______________________________________________________________

 

It appears as though America and Brazil have reached an impass and that the retaliation will remain at least for the foreseeable future. Following all the negative press on the subject, Brazil now refers to their retaliation as "security measures" for their country despite Brazil continuing to limit the fingerprint and photo process to visiting Americans.

 

I am not aware of any Americans whose behavior in Brazil would have deemed them to be classified as terrorists.

 

If Brazil streamlined the photo and fingerprint process similar to that of America's, the process would not take so long and the inconvenience of Brazil's retaliation would not be so terrible.

 

After such a long airplane flight to get to Brazil, together with the concomitant fatigue factor, being subjected to Brazil's retaliation seems mean spirited. I feel this way because I, as well as most other Americans visitors to Brazil, had nothing to do with the American policy of fingerprinting Brazilians and certain other visitors to America.

 

Unless the two governments can reach a meeting of the minds, there is not much else to say on this matter. As a famous statesman once said, "When the horse is dead, it is time to get off."

 

I shall continue to travel to Brazil despite the policy which, according to the AP, will be official on Monday.

[trilingual]

Digital cameras and fingerprint readers supposedly will be in place tomorrow at major airports, according to the local news. Assuming they're properly installed, of course!

 

There's not much else to say about this topic, except that it's not necessarily a bad thing for Americans to get a taste of what our own government dishes out to foreign visitors. Maybe it'll wake people up enough to get them to start complaining to their congressional representatives.

 

Meanwhile, even if Brazil's action is childish (in my opinion), the reaction of hundreds of millions of Latin Americans and people from other parts of the world is understandable: they're not terrorists, their countries aren't hotbeds of terrorism, and they resent being treated like they're all potential terrorists because of U.S. xenophobia. That's exactly the way many Americans feel when faced with Brazil's measures, for exactly the same reasons. But there it is. . . Sigh! :-(