HID Global Receives Additional Order For U.S. Green Cards
HID Global recently announced that the company has received a follow-on order for the manufacture and supply of U.S. government Permanent Resident Cards, also known as “Green Cards,” issued to all legal foreign residents of the United States under the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) border security program.
More than 3 million multi-technology HID Global eID cards have been issued as Green Cards, in addition to more than 30 million of the company’s first-generation Green Cards that have been issued since 1997. During its 15 years of use, the card’s digital security has never been compromised.
“The proven security of our multi-technology eID cards contributes directly to the overall security of U.S. immigration and border control,” said Kevin McKenna, vice president of sales for Government ID Solutions, Americas, with HID Global. “We are proud of our contribution to homeland security through both generations of Green Cards, which are among the most physically secure and counterfeit-resistant, machine-readable IDs ever issued.”
Governments worldwide are rapidly moving from traditional national IDs to more secure eIDs. Launched in mid-2010, the re-designed, new-generation U.S. Green Card was the world’s first ID card to combine HID’s LaserCard optical security media (OSM) technology and an embedded RFID tag with other advanced security features. Customized specifically for USCIS, the optical security media provides extraordinary visual security in an era when 90 percent of eIDs are still authenticated by the human eye. The RFID tag was incorporated to accelerate legitimate passage at U.S. land borders.
ABI recently said in its “Smart Cards in Government and Healthcare Citizen ID” report for the first quarter of 2012 that the government, healthcare, and citizen ID market celebrated another successful year in 2011, with shipments of drivers licenses, healthcare, national ID, and voters' cards achieving year-over-year double digit growth of 18 percent.
The firm said that governments are continuing to seek new, effective, and efficient ways to combat fraud, merge multiple services into one document, see a return on their investments, and make services and applications more convenient for their citizens. These goals are being achieved with the deployment of migration to new, more secure documentation with an increased emphasis on integrating ID and healthcare solutions with contact and contactless smart technology.