If the country you were to immigrate to required your fingerprints....

[Automate]

I guess I'm looking at it from an angle, ok.....fingerprints now but what next? Where do they draw the line?

The answer to that is: they don't and won't draw a line (and you know it, but many others in here certainly do not). They already tried to be even more radical with this by requiring the same from every immigrant, no matter the country of origin (and got shot down, good work by the privacy groups there). After a while, once they would have seen that this fingerprint database doesn't really help at all (increasing surveillance does not deter crime, the UK and their extensive CCTV network should have already shown that), they would have demanded something more on the same flimsy just-in-case basis.

This brings me to the main point: what is it exactly that warrants all this paranoia against immigrants, that all of them should be fingerprinted? As far as I know, in the countries with the largest legal immigrant populations, they commit far less crimes than the "native" citizens! Take USA, for example: nation-wide immigrants are five times less likely to be in prison than the main population. In California, the state with the largest immigrant population, that factor is 11. This law proposal is nothing but some baseless fear-mongering, maybe by some nationalist politicians and groups.

http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/ju...ury-research-finds-crime-rates-immigrants-are

The patterns with any privacy-reducing laws and other sorts of restrictions have been extremely clear: they'll want to fuck people's privacy up as much as they can. And they will, if they learn to do it subtly and covertly enough. So far all these recent attempts in such lawmaking have been too radical and that's why they have gotten this sort of backlash.

Another interesting thing that I think is pretty accurate: if you store a large amount of data for a long period of time, the higher will be the probability for misusing it. Unwarranted just-in-case databases of personal information should not be allowed. Someone with malicious intent will always be able to get access given enough time and in those cases some measures should be in place of controlling the damage. A fingerprint is a permanent immutable record of a person, as far as I know and that's why it should not be just collected just whenever some privacy-bashing politicians decide to get an erection.

 

[Rey C.]

This.
We seem to rather freely share our information with private corporations than we do with the government. We refuse to fill out a 10 question census, but we will gladly give AT&T our social security number, credit card number, date of birth and mother's maiden name, without question. Because they have to have it to make sure we are us.
The phone company, our internet providers, the banks, the credit card company, the insurance companies, social networks, , anyone that sells you a car, anyone that sells you a house, the retailer that talks you into using one of their credit cards, any financing company, the company that does your taxes - if anyone thinks that because they are hiding from the government that they are hiding from the establishment - if anyone thinks that it is the government which is spying on them, think again. Big Brother comes in many different forms.

Yeah, I think this is what many people don't get. Apart from the Googles, Apples and Facebooks of the world, there is a company called Experian. It is a global corporation in the business of collecting personal data on anybody and everybody. They have operations in 40 some countries. Their bread & butter is supplying credit rating info on consumers. But they also supply background info and other data to corporations and governments. And unlike most governments, that do have rules (whether they follow them or not is a different question), Experian swims in a largely unregulated ocean of data. But the average person has never heard of Experian, doesn't realize what it does... and so they don't feel threatened by it. Experian knows where you are, where you've been and what you did while you were there.

If the U.S. government (or any non-totalitarian government) collected half the data on citizens that Experian does, people would be up in arms. But because it's a corporation, we just walk around all fat & happy. Free enterprise corporations are good. Only the gubment will do us harm. Yeah. Right.

 

[georges]

I'd stay because rules are rules and I'm a guest here. And when you have nothing to hide and when you are not associated with any criminal activities, then it shouldn't be a problem for you to give your fingerprints

 

[Ace Boobtoucher]

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution regarding a right to privacy. Self incrimination is another story. I've lost count of the number of times I've been fingerprinted for various jobs so it's moot, to me anyway. For legal immigration we screen people for communicable diseases so screening them for criminal activity shouldn't really be an issue.