International House of Horrors: Please print clearly...

A self-admitted key mandate of the US Department of Homeland Security's charter to keep the country safe is to verify the exit of visitors by collecting the same type of biometric data (fingerprints and digital pictures) now supplied upon entry. This would allow matching entry and exit of visitors to keep track of them.

Reasonable and necessary? Definitely!

But the problem is the proposed implementation. In a baffling bureaucratic decision, the DHS is again resting this responsibility in the hands of the private transportation industry. A duty that would add an uncompensated financial burden on the industry of up to $3Bn dollars over 10 years.

The current system depends of the dreaded I-94 form that is filled out upon entry, a stub stapled in the visitor's passport and collected upon exit by the airline providing international carriage. For anyone who has non-US friends, we've all heard stories of this collection routinely not happening, most often by simple oversight. Yet try and re-enter without having had it collected: according to DHS, you've obviously tried to stay in the US and are obliged to provide them proof of exit, despite the fact you're physically standing in front of the customs agent re-entering.

Yet this is the process they want to leave in the hands of that same industry, only now collecting MORE data and not just the stub of the passport-stapled green form.

Does anyone but me see the madness in this?

Many other countries have solved the problem simply: their immigration department sets up an exit passport control much like the entry process; one where the agent instantly knows whether you've overstayed your welcome. And if all is ok, check you out with no fuss, bother or the use of staple removers.

And ya know, I would much rather place that duty of security in the hands of someone who's job it is and is trained to do it, than someone trying to load a plane that's late while someone with screaming kids is standing in front of them demanding everyone get seats together.

I know, why not ask Boeing to give back the almost $1Bn they're getting for that swiss-cheese of a border fence and use the money to do what actually needs to be done?

- Farmer Ted