Port workers will undergo federal security checks

WASHINGTON – Seaport workers will undergo background checks for links to terrorism and to ensure they are legal U.S. residents, the Bush administration said Tuesday.

The announcement came after months of scathing criticism about security gaps at the nation’s ports.

The heightened scrutiny – which will begin immediately – drew praise from some lawmakers and port associations that said the checks were long overdue. Others jeered the security measures as either too weak or too invasive of workers’ privacy rights.

Names of an estimated 400,000 employees who work in the most sensitive areas of ports will be matched against government terror watch lists and immigration databases, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. They will be among roughly 750,000 workers – including truckers and rail employees – who have unrestricted access to ports and will be required to carry tamper-resistant identification cards by next year.

The background checks will not examine workers’ criminal history, although Chertoff left open that possibility for the future.

How much the background checks will cost was not immediately available.

The Bush administration has been under fire for months for what critics call holes in security measures at ports, which were highlighted after a Dubai company’s purchase of a British firm gave it control of six American ports. An outcry in Congress led the Dubai company, DP World, to decide to sell the U.S. operations to an American firm.

Congress is considering port security legislation this week, prompting some to question the sincerity and timing of Chertoff’s announcement.

“It appears that DHS steps up to the plate to protect our national security only when the cameras are rolling and the whole world is watching,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. He gave tepid praise for the push for ID cards, which he said should have been issued years ago.

In 2002, Congress ordered the Transportation Security Administration to issue biometric ID card to workers who passed criminal background checks. Those cards were supposed to be issued to port workers beginning in August 2004. By that December, the Government Accountability Office said, bureaucratic delays and poor planning were hampering development of the card.

Cargo industry officials have worried that a federal ID system aimed at boosting security could cost many port workers their jobs – leading to bottlenecks in the flow of goods destined for virtually every U.S. community.