Right after 9/11, where all the hijackers were identified as visitors/students in US, with foreign passports, the knee-jerk reaction was very obvious. Tighten the lease on them visitors. Treat all foreigners with suspicion.
Hundreds of illegal immigrants were rounded off, and even though they had no connection with acts of terrorism, they were detained and deported. All fine and well, since rules and laws should be followed. But that did little, if anything to fight the war on terrorism.
More then a year has gone by. If you follow the news, almost all suspects in terrorism who are rounded up by US Authorities within US in the last year, are US citizens, either born here or naturalized.
The policy of using your passport to profile you as a suspect does not, therefore appears to be a success. I think its about time, US, formulates some better metrics of profiling the terror suspects, rather than dividing its residents in two categories (1) with US passports, (2) with non-US passport.
The recent policy of finger-printing Canadian citizens born in Middle Eastern countries is merely another example of the incorrect profiling mechanism. I have nothing against finger-printing per se, but the way US goes about these measures seems culpable of incorrect reading and increasing their work load without verifiable measure of success on the core issue of providing security to the people.