As the United States tightens its border controls and insists future visitors must possess hi-tech biometric passports, it seems the rest of the world will be left to foot the bill.
A picture paints a thousand words, say poets and artists, but in the case of a digitally doctored biometric passport, that dreamy assertion probably falls numerically short. Unique biological identification tags, such as retinal images and fingerprints, will soon be incorporated into Hong Kong passports. Any discrepancies at border or airport will mean an 'entry denied' stamp and early passage home, the rationale being that anything so impressively science-fictional can't possibly be wrong.
Integrated circuit-chip technology, as used in 'smart' ID cards, will be used to store the data, but the information about you won't stop with sticky fingers and a study of your pupils. Storage space will exist, perhaps for filling in later, for your favoured Mark Six numbers, the name of your dog, the football team you follow and any dirty little habits you might enjoy.
If one of your dirty little habits is blowing up airliners or bombing embassies then watch out: Big Brother knows what you look like and where you've been. Regrettably, he knows the same about the rest of us too, and soon we're all going to have to smile - actually, glare straight ahead - for the cameras.
The reason for all this, it will surprise no one, is appeasement of the United States. In the aftermath of September 11, the US decided to toughen its border controls and biometric passports for everyone was a fruit of its labours (although its largesse stops short of paying for them).
Where traditional passports are concerned, visitors to the US fall into two broad groups. Group one comprises citizens of 27 lucky sovereign lands and city-states, including Australia, New Zealand, most European countries and Singapore (but not China or Hong Kong), who are permitted to enter the US for up to 90 days without visas. Group two consists of everybody else, who must often wait months for visa applications to be processed, then provide fingerprints and submit to facial scans on arrival, at the behest of some of the most churlish immigration officers ever to growl from the other side of the yellow line. If you're not already a criminal, you'll soon feel like one.
Not that group one has it all its own way: its members are at the centre of the growing biometric passport rumpus and find that by October 26 this year, in accordance with the USA Patriot Act, their governments must have issued them with the newfangled documents. Should they find themselves without, they will be obliged to join the contemptible ne'er-do-wells in the scrum for a visa.