INS check-ins
at airport
to speed up

Honolulu will get a system that
uses an electronic palm reader

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Travelers arriving in Honolulu from foreign countries soon may be able to breeze through the immigration process by showing a plastic card and thrusting a hand into an electronic palm reader.

Honolulu is in line to get the new Immigration & Naturalization Service automated system, already in place at airports in New York, Newark, N.J., Miami and Los Angeles.

"We had a meeting with state airport authorities a couple of weeks ago," said Donald Radcliffe, INS director for Hawaii.

A center will have to be built at the airport to process applications but as soon as it is, Radcliffe said, Honolulu will get the new system. That is targeted for early next year.

It won't apply to everyone, but it should speed processing for enough foreign arrivals to reduce lines at the airport, INS officials say. That is bound to please the tourism industry and people who travel frequently between Asia and Hawaii.

Americans, Canadians and citizens of Bermuda can participate and speed up their entry or re-entry.

So can those who travel to the United States at least three times a year and are citizens of the 26 countries, including Japan, that take part in the INS visa-waiver program. That is the program in which citizens don't have to go to a U.S. embassy or consulate in their countries to get cleared before heading for the United States. The INSPASS, or INS Passenger Accelerated Service System, works this way:

To start with, the traveler has to go through the old system but on arrival, goes to the kiosk or special office at the airport and fills out Form I-823.

Identification is confirmed, photographs are taken and so are fingerprints and a "hand geometry biometric image" -- a digital picture of the top of the hand.

INS checks out the applicant and, if everything is proper, issues a special identification card.

The next time the traveler arrives, he or she bypasses the immigration line, puts the card in a reader, places his or her hand under a scanner and gets automatic approval.

The INSPASS system doesn't apply to the other inspection that foreign arrivals must go through, the U.S. Customs system. However, companies involved in foreign tourism say Customs is already faster than it used to be.