The Department of Homeland Security is proposing a new regulation to expand the biometric requisite to more immigration processes and give the administration more flexibility to deal with the increase in needs.
Any applicant, petitioner, sponsor, beneficiary or individual related to an immigration benefit or request (this including U.S. citizens) will have to undergo a biometrics collection, regardless of the age of the individual unless it is expressly waived by DHS.
The biometrics modalities will also increase as iris scans, palm prints and voice print will also be collected.
For petitions involving a claimed genetic relationship, DHS proposed a DNA collection requirement.
For the foreign nationals who are granted an immigration benefit the biometric vetting will be continued for each benefit request until granted the citizenship.
From a business immigration perspective this could mean that authorized signatories or other company representatives before immigration could be also subject to biometric data collection, even when they are US citizens.
This also means that foreign national employees and their dependent family members will be subject to continuing surveillance and may need to attend numerous biometrics collections, even absent a new petition or application. In addition, given the increase in biometrics processing and the new proposed modalities, including more DNA screenings, privacy issues will be of great concern for employers and employees alike.
The regulation is still at a proposal stage and will have to under go several steps before DHS is able to implement and actually be able to collect biometrical data for each immigration benefit request.