USA fingerprints

ultrak3wl

If you go to America on holiday (from England) do they take your fingerprints at their immigration? I read somewhere that they now do for people from "most countries." I quite fancy taking the kids to Florida but not if they're going to get fingerprinted when we arrive.

jasonrat

I quite fancy taking the kids to Florida but not if they're going to get fingerprinted when we arrive.

why not?yes they do even our 5 year and 3 year olds.
aren't their fingerprints on their passports anyway?

photome

Again, why not? what do you have to hide?

Yes they do fingerprint everybody

WelshWoofer

Just in case you're worried about the type of fingerprinting you see on The Bill - its an electronic scan of your fingerprint - no ink etc
It takes 1 min to do and is just a formality. The kids won't think anything of it.

pin

They will fingerprint you and your kids. If you don't want that to happen, I'm afraid you won't be able to go to the States.

jasonrat

and they could miss a trip of a lifetime coz disney and florida is absolutly brilliant. best family holiday we've ever had

Need_More_Money_2

What's the problem? It is just done as part of the immigration procedure. They ask you to put one finger from each hand on an electronic scanner. They also take your photograph. Taking the fingerprint/photo doesn't take long; however, the queues to get through immigration can be long.

chatta

They also ask you to look into a camera for iris recognition as well. At least I had to last year.

ultrak3wl

Ta for replies... I did take them to Florida a couple of years ago and we liked it. Not so much for Disney we had more fun in the Keys seeing the alligators and fish and all that. Just normal showing-passport then though.

Cyprus was second choice so I'll have a look at a trip there instead.

Need_More_Money_2

chatta wrote:

They also ask you to look into a camera for iris recognition as well. At least I had to last year.

I don't think they've gone down the road of iris recognition yet. If you have a new British passport with a digital photo it stores some information about facial features. Things like distance between eyes etc I think. As far as I know the phptpgraph they take at immigration is just a photograph, not for iris recognition.

chatta

I did ask what it was for and that was what I was told by immigration, but who knows, either way it was a photo of some sort.