Fingerprinting proposals 'racist', claim Greens

Government proposals to fingerprint non-EU nationals living in the State to combat identity fraud have been condemned as racist by the Green Party.

A Department of Justice spokesman confirmed to ireland.comthe proposals were at an "advanced stage", and would be enacted within a couple of months.

They will apply to all people resident in Ireland who are not nationals of EU member states, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Switzerland.

The move was instigated by the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, in response to the "alarming number of cases of people coming into the country under false identities", he said. Many of these were responsible for social welfare financial abuses and multiple refugee status applications, he said.

"If people are here legitimately, then they have nothing to worry about," he said. "The reality of the situation is that Ireland is becoming more multicultural and any country has a right to be certain of who is crossing its borders."

However, the Green Party justice spokeswoman, Ms Patricia McKenna MEP, said the "racist" move would effectively "criminalise" up to 100,000 students, people on work permits and parents of Irish-born children.

"There is no fail-safe way of eliminating the welfare scams that a tiny minority will try to carry out," she said. "Thus on balance, this is a huge infringement on the rights of the majority for little or no return. Ireland is in danger of becoming a police state."

A spokesman from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Mr Liam Herrick, expressed "serious concerns" about the proposals, which he described as "very unusual". He said he would be seeking clarification from the Minister on a number of issues, including the proportionality of the measure and safeguards against abuse of personal information.

The Department spokesman said the basis of the new legislation is already in place in the form of the Aliens Act (1948), which grants gardaí the right to fingerprint any non-national to determine their exact identity.

All non-EU nationals who are here on work permits are photographed. The introduction of fingerprinting is merely an additional security measure, the spokesman added. The new law will compel them to carry an identity card displaying a fingerprint.

Asylum-seekers and refugees are automatically fingerprinted and photographed upon application to the National Bureau of Immigration. While this is common policy throughout the EU, no other member-state has a policy of fingerprinting all foreign nationals.