TWIC program is impeding mariners’ ability to work

It is said the road to you-know-where is paved with good intentions. For maritime, the road to supposedly safer U.S. ports is paved with the TWIC card program.

There’s a good article in Professional Mariner detailing how the program is making it more difficult for a seaman to earn a living.

TWIC—or Transportation Worker’s Identification Credentials—was implemented by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 (MTSA) in the aftermath of 9/11. It is a biometric ID card required of all U.S. merchant mariners and other industry workers to pass through port areas and board commercial ships. 1.7 million cards have been issued.

According to the article, here are just some of the program’s problems that are burdening maritime workers:

-TSA requires the applicant to appear in person at the TWIC enrollment center two separate times. One is the initial visit for fingerprints and an interview. After the background check period lasting several weeks or months, the applicant must return to the center to pick up the card.

-The card issuance fee is $132.50 and must be paid for a reissuance every five years.

-The location of the centers may pose a burden both logistically and financially. The article gives an example of an engineer who had to travel over 400 miles from his home in Montana to the nearest center in Washington state. There is also the case of a galley worker who had to make two 1,800 mile round trips from Colorado to Houston. Airfare, hotels, food and taxis brought the $132.50 cost for the card to over $1,000.

The disparity of enrollment center locations is striking: seven western states do not have a TWIC enrollment center while California has 15 and Washington state has six, three of which are located within 62 miles of each other.

Why must a seaman be forced to leave the state to obtain the card?

-The card is sometimes not even recognized by the agency that issues it. Seamen can tell you about trying to fly to a ship and having their TWIC rejected as a proper form of identification by airport TSA because the security person did not know what it was, even though TSA issues the card. The article’s author explains that situation happened to him at the Seattle airport.

-The cards are not foolproof. While seamen are getting delayed from boarding their flights or entering the terminal because of security unfamiliarity or card reader problems (more below), it’s possible that the very people they are designed to impede (i.e. terrorists) are actually beating the system. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in May describing how its investigators used counterfeit TWICs to enter a secure cargo terminal and then drove a truck full of explosives inside.

-Lack of effective card readers. In the GAO sting operation, the security gate did not have any card reading machines able to read the biometric computer chip in the cards. Even though the card readers were required in 2006, Homeland Security has not yet given final approval on any of the several models that TSA has tested.