[mschuster91]

The problem is that the fingerprint data will not be used exclusively for immigration purposes but also for general crime fighting.

I oppose that - because it is the first step to extend the surveillance state. Next to no one cares if refugees are forced to give up their fingerprints (except maybe the radical left), most people will actually silently approve of this, but who guarantees that in four years this won't be extended to every German?

And yes, there's precedence for politicians doing this - the Maut data, as well as the Vorratsdatenspeicherung (internet provider data), were once thought to be only for serious crimes but there are already plans to use the data also to fight "common lowlevel crime"...

We may trust our current governments but we cannot trust what future governments will do.

[bad_user]

Given the high rate of incidents that Europe is having with immigrants, the alternative is to close the borders. So at this point, pick your poison: let tens or hundreds of thousands die of war or starvation, or take away freedoms that they wouldn't have without having crossed those borders anyway.

I'm a libertarian at heart, I've been very sympathetic towards refugees, however seeing lots of immigrants misbehave in my trips to the UK and Germany, I'm beginning to understand nationalism and why people have a periodic tendency towards populism (e.g. Trump, Brexit, etc).

The whole purpose of fingerprinting is crime fighting. Nothing else. There's no such thing as "immigration purposes". And when you're going into somebody's house, you obey their rules, otherwise you're free to go elsewhere.

[mschuster91]

> Given the high rate of incidents that Europe is having with immigrants, the alternative is to close the borders.

"high rate of incidents"? Next to all recent terrorist attacks in the last years involved people who were born in Europe. According to Sascha Lobo and other media reports, all of them were known to police for being violent and dangerous, one of the London terrorists actually was on a TV show "the jihadist next door".

And the (real) problems, e.g. overcrowding refugee camps, could be solved by solidarity in Europe, but right now it's Italy and Greece picking up the brunt of the load, then Germany - and then, with a vast distance, every other country in Europe. Despite especially the Eastern European (Visegrad) countries having profited massively by financial solidarity from the rest of Europe (which is mainly DE, FR, UK).

> however seeing lots of immigrants misbehave in my trips to the UK and Germany, I'm beginning to understand nationalism and why people have a periodic tendency towards populism (e.g. Trump, Brexit, etc).

They have a tendency to nationalism/populism because populism does not work with evidence and facts but rather with emotions and propaganda.

> The whole purpose of fingerprinting is crime fighting. Nothing else.

Well, let's take the immigration discussion out of the view for one moment: for now, for example, protests are legal. But what prevents a future government from using fingerprint data or especially biometric photo data to prosecute people for protesting against government?

Nothing. And this is why such movements must be stopped before a future government turns against its citizens.

[mirekrusin]

I don't understand what's wrong about using this information against crime? It has such a low value when stolen (unless I'm missing something?) that I don't even have problem with doing it to every citizen.

When I was an expat in Brazil, the first thing Policia Federal did was to take my fingerprints - no problem with that. I imagine the same happens with immigrants in US and other countries.

Also I can imagine how difficult registering people who run from was is, surely there are cases with no documents, documents lost, abusive gangs registering people several times and claiming "borrowed cousins" as children they get more money for etc.

[mschuster91]

> I don't understand what's wrong about using this information against crime?

Because demanding fingerprints from refugees but not Germans prejudices against refugees by branding them all as potential future criminals.

> Also I can imagine how difficult registering people who run from was is, surely there are cases with no documents, documents lost, abusive gangs registering people several times and claiming "borrowed cousins" as children they get more money for etc.

These are a negligible amount of cases. And especially not worth to destroy the right to privacy of the other 99.9999% of the population.