U.S. Visitor Screening Program Expands

Program start in three cities along the Mexican and Canadian borders
Federal agents in three cities along the Mexican and Canadian borders will begin photographing and fingerprinting some foreign visitors Monday as part of a program aimed at preventing terrorists from entering the USA. But critics say the system is too costly, ineffective and vastly scaled back from what Congress ordered after the Sept. 11 attacks.The program, which has cost about $1 billion to implement so far and could eventually cost up to $10 billion to put in place, is called US-VISIT, for United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology. It has been used at 115 airports and 14 seaports since the start of the year. In that time, 319 people have been detained or turned away, though none was a suspected terrorist