Airports to Fingerprint Darkies

[Linda]

This is from my friend, Nick Hancock:


DALLAS - Foreigners entering U.S. airports and seaports —[except those from Western Europe and a handful of other countries — will soon have their fingerprints scanned and their photographs snapped as part of a new program designed to enhance border security.

The program, to be up and running on Jan. 5 at all 115 airports that handle international flights and 14 major seaports, will let Customs officials instantly check an immigrant or visitor's criminal background.

The only exceptions will be visitors from 28 countries — mostly European nations whose citizens are allowed to come to the United States for up to 90 days without visas.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031223/ap_on_re_us/airport_security_7

" . . . except those from Western Europe . . ." That means whities

[Bill Childs]

The original program, as announced months ago, was to check all persons of Mid-eastern origins ("the bad guys").
That program was amended within days of it being announced, months ago, to include checking all persons entering the country. But when that amended program was announced, the E.U. stringently opposed giving the U.S. the pre-flight notification manifests on invasion of privacy issues concerning their citizens.
For a few days thereafter, the U.S. proposed implimenting the program without checking those europeans rather than "upsetting" them.
The AP wire would have been accurate when the program was first announced or if they had specified they were talking about the first amended program, but by the date of this AP wire story, the E.U. had already agreed to give the U.S. pre-flight notification manifests, finally recognizing that the bad guys could even be E.U. as well as U.S. or Mid-easterner citizens and therefore this story is inaccurate. I can only conclude that the AP has spun this story or it is an older filing inserted as "filler" - the latter if I were being kind. The AP has a growing problem with getting "the story" correct.
A discussion of this topic would lead to issues of "Journalistic Malpractice" and intentional distortion of the news for private political purposes, which the AP (and Reuters) has often been accused of.

[Linda]

I sent your info onto Nick and he thanked us for it. He's a journalist from way back. In his opinion, there's an epidemic of fraudulent journalism going on these days.

[Bill Childs]

Those exempt as of January 5 are from countries currently requiring no visa to visit the U.S., as defined by previous int'l agreements.
The weakness of the "U.S. Visit" program is obvious if you know anything about the demographics of those countries now exempted.