The UK aims to implement measures that will require visitors and migrants from the European Union coming to the region, including Northern Ireland, to provide both their face and fingerprint biometrics.
However, there are plans to exempt people from the Republic of Ireland from having to do so.
In answer to parliamentary inquiries from Alliance Party of Northern Ireland MP Stephen Farry, the incoming Minister of State for Immigration, Robert Jenrick, laid out the proposals.
According to Jenrick, a unified global immigration system will need both face and fingerprint biometrics from all visitors and immigrants to the UK.
"Applicants must submit their biometrics as part of the ETA (Electronic Travel Authorization) application process.
"At this moment, however, we will only require facial photographs from ETA candidates, as we will not compel them to visit a visa application centre to offer their fingerprints, until there is a technical solution which will allow them to self-upload fingerprints of the requisite quality."
Irish citizens, according to the Conservative Party MP, "shall not be obliged to obtain an ETA."
"All other non-British and non-Irish nationals arriving in the UK, including those crossing the land border into Northern Ireland, need to enter in accordance with the UK's immigration framework; this will require obtaining an ETA when it is introduced," Jenrick continued.
"However, as it is today, the UK will not conduct routine immigration checks on travel from within the Common Travel Area, and there will be no immigration checks at all on the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The UK and Ireland are now collaborating to examine whether there is potential for a feasible UK/Ireland data-sharing solution to identify whether a person is a legitimate resident of Ireland and, hence, potentially exempt from the ETA need for travel into the UK.
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