State may fingerprint all immigrants

THE Department of Justice is considering the compulsory fingerprinting of all non-EU nationals living here as part of a crackdown on a massive increase in identity fraud.

The fingerprinting would form part of a proposed new form of ID for up to 100,000 immigrants, it emerged last night.

A spokesperson for Justice Minister Michael McDowell said a formal decision on whether the new ID would include fingerprints had not yet been made. However, the country’s Garda immigration chief last night said he was in favour of the move.

Detective Chief Superintendent Martin Donnellan of the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) said immigration gardaí would welcome the fingerprinting of all non-EU nationals living in Ireland. The suggestion has infuriated civil liberties groups who say such a move would be a gross infringement on privacy.

Currently only the 11,500 asylum seekers arriving annually are fingerprinted by gardaí. However, Det Chief Supt Donnellan said the fingerprinting of all non-EU nationals would cut down on illegal immigrants using several different identities to defraud the system.

At present, all 93,000 non-EU nationals living and working in Ireland have to register annually with gardaí and obtain a photo ID which is updated annually. But the new proposal would mean compulsory fingerprinting for all those immigrants, including students and workers.

Det Chief Supt Donnellan said gardaí were encountering increasing numbers of illegal immigrants masquerading under several different identities. Fingerprinting, he said, was the only way to eliminate such fraud.

“It’s something that’s going to have to be looked at because the only way of conclusively establishing the true identity of someone is by fingerprinting,” he said.

“Apart from our responsibilities under immigration acts we have a responsibility from a security point of view to try and establish the true identity of all persons. Why should anybody be going around this country with two or three identities? It’s certainly, from a security point of view, highly dangerous. And the only way we can conclusively establish the true identity of any person is by fingerprints,” he added.

But Liam Herrick of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties slammed the move which was also opposed by Amnesty International. “It’s very hard to see how we could justify fingerprinting all people coming into the country. If the US instigated a scheme where they fingerprinted all non-nationals coming into America, including Irish people, we’d all be up in arms about it and this is exactly the same thing,” he said.

It would set a dangerous precedent in linking immigration to crime when there was no evidence non-nationals were any more likely to commit identity fraud than Irish people, he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said that under the Aliens Order 1946, the law already permitted the fingerprinting of non-nationals should the move be approved.