MINNEAPOLIS – Border guards in International Falls, Minn., and other busy northern crossings will start fingerprinting foreign visitors by the end of the year as the Department of Homeland Security clamps down on the Canadian border.

Technology including motion-detecting sensors and land- and air-based surveillance of deserted stretches will also improve security, Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security, said Tuesday at a conference of law enforcement officials from eight Midwestern and western states and Canada.

Fewer foreigners cross into the United States from Canada than from Mexico, but they are from more countries and come for a wider variety of reasons.

The Homeland Security Department aims to expand the collection of fingerprints and other digital biometric data to the 50 busiest land crossings by the end of the year. Fingerprinting has already started at Mexican border crossings in Arizona, Texas and California.

The U.S. border crossing in Calais will begin the process at the end of this month, Assistant Port Director Tim Donnell said Wednesday.

Two international bridges connect Calais with St. Stephen, New Brunswick, the downtown Ferry Point Bridge and the Milltown Bridge, north of the downtown.

Most Canadians are exempt from the process, Donnell added. “It will involve those travelers from other countries who are coming to the United States from Canada,” he said. “Say someone from France or Egypt or whatever arrives here, they have to get what’s called a 994, a little document that attaches to their passport.”

The process includes a digital photograph, biographical information and a picture of the traveler’s index finger. “It will probably add another minute to the process,” he said.

Calais is one of the top 50 busiest ports in the United States. “But every land border port is going to have it by the end of 2005,” Donnell said.

Meanwhile, the new processes will mean little to the crossing at the Fort Kent port of entry, a supervisor at the said Wednesday.

Michael Dalhgren said the new technology will come to northern Maine ports at some time, but they don’t have dates for it to happen.

“It won’t apply to U.S. citizens and Canadian citizens, but will for citizens of other countries,” Dahlgren said. “This new system will be real negligible to people around here.

“We are not inundated here with residents of other countries,” he said. “When the process happens it will take about 10 minutes, about one minute more than it does now.”

Dalhgren said it will be business as usual for American and Canadian citizens living along the border.

Undersecretary Hutchinson said, “The fact still is that a terrorist, and the terrorists of 9/11, came in not sneaking across a land border but with documentation at a port of entry. That is obviously their preference. We have to continue to work on our ports of entry.”

The fingerprinting technology – used already at airports and seaports – will be extended to all land border crossings by the end of 2005. Most Canadians won’t be subjected to the scans because they don’t need a visa to enter the United States.

The conference, which included representatives of tribal governments and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was closed to media except for Hutchinson’s speech and a brief question-and-answer with reporters.

“I’m glad the emphasis is being placed on this border,” Hennepin County Sheriff Patrick McGowan said, in a phone interview from a counterterrorism conference in Boston. “Hopefully people will understand we’re doing this to help make our country safer from those who want to come here and do ill will to us.”

Tighter security at border crossings may lead terrorists to find other ways to enter the country, Hutchinson said.

The 5,525-mile Canadian border has one U.S. border guard for every 10 watching the Mexican border, Hutchinson said. His department has given grants to pay border guards overtime to increase patrols, resulting in a “historic level of security for the northern border,” he said.

Unmanned aerial vehicles – now being used to patrol the Mexican border – may be added on the Canadian border, he said. But there’s no substitute for citizens who live near the border who spot and report suspicious activities, he said.

“No one knows an anomaly better than they do,” Hutchinson said. “You can’t put enough border patrol along the northern border to know everything that happens.”

Of $2.5 billion in homeland security grants distributed last Friday, $243 million went to eight states on the Canadian border, from Michigan westward to Washington and Alaska.

NEWS Reporters Diana Graettinger and Beurmond Banville contributed to this report.