Calling for a new "vital line of defense" against terrorists, Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed new Justice Department regulations on Wednesday that in their first year would require 100,000 foreign students, tourists, researchers and other visitors to register with the federal government.
Ashcroft refused to be drawn into reporters' questions as to which nationals would be specifically targeted by the new rules, which Arab- and Muslim-American advocates complain are biased.
"The criteria that are used to identify such visitors will be continually upgraded to reflect our evolving intelligence on terrorism and terrorist threats," the attorney general said.
But no national of any country is automatically exempt from submitting to the new registration requirements, an unidentified official stressed.
"I guess it would be safe to say this: There is no country outside the listed state sponsors of terrorism where every person would be the subject of this focus. It would also be safe to say that there is no country where no person would be the subject of this focus."
Other government officials said men 18 to 35 years of age from about 20 largely Muslim and Middle Eastern nations, including key allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, would make up the bulk of those who would be fingerprinted, photographed and required to fill out a lengthy form. The guidelines would not affect those with green cards.
Foreigners arriving at airports and seaports who fit the profile of potential terrorists would have their fingerprints matched electronically against federal databases. After 30 days in the country, they would have to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Ashcroft reiterated a number of times that such a registration system was commonplace in other nations, particularly in Europe.
The guidelines, called the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, would have three main components.
Visa holders would be fingerprinted, and matched against federal fingerprint databases as well as prints taken from al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan and other countries.
The second component is periodic registration, which many European countries require of foreigners planning to visit for longer than a month or so, Ashcroft said. Indeed, the current proposal is based on the alien-registration program that ran from 1940 to the early 1980s, when it fell into disuse because of a surge of immigrants and cuts in INS staffing and budgets.
The final component, Ashcroft said, is tighter exit controls.
However, the Council on American-Islamic Relations expressed concern about the proposal.
"Unfortunately, policies that single out particular religious and ethnic groups create a false sense of security and end up further damaging America's image and reputation around the world," the council said in a statement.
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