NEW YORK, June 6: Thousands of visitors from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and some other Middle-Eastern countries would have to register with the US government and be fingerprinted according to new rules being proposed by the US Justice Department, the New York Times said on Wednesday quoting Bush administration officials.

The paper says that the initiative, the subject of intense debate within the administration, is designed for “individuals from countries who pose the highest risk to our security,” including most visa holders from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and many other Muslim nations.

More than 100,000 foreigners, including students, workers, researchers and tourists, all foreigners from designated countries who do not hold green cards, would probably be covered by the plan, the Bush administration officials said.

New arrivals from the designated countries would be fingerprinted at airports or seaports, and be required to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service after a 30-day stay in the country, officials said.

Violators could be fined, refused re-entry into the United States or possibly deported, officials said.

The plan will be published in the Federal Register. After a comment period, it will become a Justice Department regulation.

The Times said that the proposal ignited a raging debate in the Bush administration. White House officials supported the proposal, but the State Department lodged objections, fearing diplomatic repercussions with allies in the war on terror.

The civil liberties and Arab-American groups expressed outrage at the proposed requirements, arguing that such a policy was a blatant example of racial and ethnic profiling.

“What’s the logic of this?” Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, was quoted as saying by the Times. “Anyone who’s truly dangerous is not going to show up to be registered.”

James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a policy organization, said the registration plan would be “an overtly discriminatory, inefficient and ineffective way to deal with the problem”.

The authority for proposing the new registration requirements rests with a long-dormant provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, administration officials said.

A section of that law requires all foreign visa holders to register with the government if they remain in the United States for 30 days or longer. The law also required the fingerprinting of virtually all foreigners who were not permanent residents, except for diplomats.

The law remained on the books, but enforcement fell off in the early 1980’s when the volume of visa holders climbed rapidly and the immigration service’s budget and staffing dropped.

In 1979, the year when Iranian hostage crisis occurred, Iranian students were required to register with the government. After the attacks last year, most visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Libya were fingerprinted as they entered the United States.

But the terrorist attacks had given fresh impetus to a much broader programme. One administration official told the paper that the new registration proposal would help the government in identifying the highest-risk foreign visitors now living in the United States.