China to Collect Fingerprints of Tourists
Indeed, the flow of tourists to the Celestial Empire has increased manyfold. In the mid-1980s, about 12 million people crossed China's border annually, and in September 2011, 260 million foreigners visited the country. Moreover, Russian tourists visit the Celestial Empire very often – they are in third place in the overall ranking of tourist flows with 9%, while the best indicators are for travelers from South Korea (15.6%) and Japan (14%).
Russian tourists will have to get used to the idea that without fingerprint collection they will be able to travel only in their home country, and perhaps, if lucky, to Egypt or Turkey. Since the new visa code of the European Union already prescribes fingerprint collection, and Eastern countries are gradually following the example of the United States and Great Britain.
In addition, fingerprints may soon be included among the required data for obtaining a biometric passport for international travel in Russia. The Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation plans to start an experiment with updating the information on biometric passport chips in 2012. The fingerprints of the index fingers of both hands of the tourist will be entered on the electronic media of international passports. As Turist.rbc.ru notes, this should speed up border control procedures in countries where automated border crossing points have already been installed.
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