In his Nov. 22 letter, "Half-baked antiterror measure," Francisco Menendez writes that "I would be more than glad to offer my biometric data as means of identification" if all Japanese nationals are required to be fingerprinted as well. Menendez will be interested to know that I visited the Tokyo Immigration Office (last week) to register my biometric data in order to use the automatic immigration gate at Narita -- and there were Japanese in line, too.
Anyone, foreign or Japanese national, who registers two fingerprints and a facial photo can depart and enter Japan using an automatic gate at Narita (foreigners need a valid e-entry permit). This hopefully solves the obvious problem of how to get a family with mixed nationalities smoothly through immigration. An immigration official told me that such a family that is pre-registered can stand in the same line for using the automatic gates, one for Japanese nationals and the other for foreigners.
At the gate, we first scan the bar code on our passport, then we enter a private booth to verify that our fingerprints are the same as those registered for that passport. Japanese are registering their biometric data for the convenience of going through immigration more quickly. We can go through the regular line instead if it looks quicker than the automatic gate.
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