The Daily Mail reports that the UK is ready to begin issuing national identity cards within months, targeting foreigners, airport staff and students in the first wave of the program.  Under the new plan, foreign nationals will need to provide fingerprints and personal data that can be checked against a database.  The program will cost an estimated $11.1 billion and involve the creation of a new national database, which will store a wide range of individual data.   

Proponents of the initiative say the cards and database will help tackle terrorism, crime and illegal immigration.  However, critics insist the system will be too expensive, will provide little added security and will erode personal freedoms.

According to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, foreigners from outside the European Economic Area — the 27-nation European Union plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein — deemed at most risk of committing immigration offenses, will be targeted first, and would include those using student or marriage visas to live in Britain.  The identity cards will store details of the holders' immigration status, entitlements and specifics on how long they can stay in the U.K. , she said.

After the focus on foreigners in the UK, beginning in 2009, citizens of the European Economic Area who live in the UK and Britons working in secure sites, including some airport staff, power station workers and staff at the London 2012 Olympics, will be the next  group required to sign up for identity cards.

Students and young people will be asked to join the program voluntarily starting in 2010, Smith said.  According to Smith, from 2011, everyone in Britain applying to renew a passport will have his or her details added to the national database. She said she expects most people to be registered by 2017.  

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The number of crimes committed by foreigners visiting Japan dropped for the second straight year to 35,800 last year, down 10.8 percent from the previous year, after hitting a peak in 2005, the National Police Agency told Japan ’s Kyodo newspaper this month.  However, the number of crimes detected by police during the five-year period from 2003 to 2007 increased some 70 percent from the period of 1993-1997, with an NPA official stressing the need for further crackdown on them.

Of the 35,800 cases, 25,753 cases were violations of the criminal code, down 6.2 percent from the previous year, while 10,047 cases were violations of special law, such as immigrant control and refugee recognition act, down 20.7 percent, according to the NPA.

The number of foreign criminals arrested, excluding permanent residents in Japan , in the reporting year fell 15.6 percent to 15,923, of whom Chinese constituted 5,346, South Koreans 2,037, Filipinos 1,807, Brazilians 1,255 and Vietnamese 806.  For nine criminals, Tokyo asked their home countries to punish them as they fled from Japan after committing crimes, bringing the number of such criminals to 48 since 1999.