Canadian citizens are exempt if they're coming across as a visitor. Pretty much everyone else -- visa waiver program visitors, holders of non-immigrant visas, permanent residents -- get fingerprinted at the border these days.

The program used to be called US-VISIT, and has now been expanded into something called OBIM. There's much more information online under the former name.

I'm german, so it probably depends on the nationality of the visitor or maybe even the destination airport (I landed in Atlanta). But there was no discussion or anything, just "put your finger on this scanner, thanks, next finger ...". Everything was alright with my visa and every other passenger in line had to do the same thing.

> I've literally never had this happen (Canada -> USA).

Did you fly in? I imagine it only happens at airports, not at land borders

(I'm from the UK and I had my fingerprints taken at JFK)

I'm a French citizen living in Canada and going fairly often to the US by bus. They do it at land borders too, it's just that Canadian citizens are exempt.

Can confirm this is any non-Canadian, I'm from the UK -> fingerprints on a land crossing.

I flew from Canada into La Guardia recently and didn't have fingerprints taken.

Canadians get the same treatment that US citizens get and they don't do the fingerprint thing then.

All others, including ESTA or visa holders have to go through this every, single time. Souce: I was in the US 10+ times in the last 3 years and don't have a US nor Canadian passport.

Australian, can confirm they fingerprinted me on the one and only time I visited the US in 2009 - and I was a minor then as well.

Me too, 2010 or 2011 I think. I think that was on the same terminal where they later started hassling me for lefse or akevitt until I missed my connection (came from Scandinavia.)

To be fair: my best modern airport experience was US as well. Denver was just awesome, really surprisingly quick and amazingly effective (that's where I lost my key-tool with a 12mm blade I thought was legal and that went with me through several airports prior to Denver.)