Summary
Thursday's railway bombings in Madrid, which have understandably heightened everyone's security concerns, once again drove home the importance of protecting our transportation infrastructure from terrorist attack. In this context, the plan recently proposed by officials at the Department of Homeland Security that works toward placing U.S. screeners at foreign airports to process passengers on U.S.-bound planes is an important step in the right direction. The plan, known as the Immigration Security Initiative (ISI), would allow U.S. inspectors, working with officials in host countries, to identify suspicious travelers and question them about their travel plans. Airports under consideration include Heathrow and Gatwick near London, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Frankfurt Am Main in Frankfurt, Mexico City International, Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and Narita, outside of Tokyo. Forty percent of all U.S.-bound passenger traffic flies through these seven hubs.
Under current procedure, airline employees at foreign airports must check the identification of all U.S.-bound passengers before they board the aircraft. But such employees are not trained to identify falsified documents, and the ISI would place Customs officials with the proper training at gates to prevent potential terrorists from boarding the planes. Airlines would save by not paying fines of up to $10,000, which they accrue each time they bring a passenger who is blocked at immigration. And such a move would also help avert the type of flight cancellations that disrupted several U.S.-bound flights during the Christmas holidays in December.See the full content of this document
Extract
Enhancing Airline Security
The idea is not new. The ISI is actually quite similar to the Contai...
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