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On the day of my Canadian visa biometrics, I had a slight cut on the upper part of my upper thumb due to a razor. It didn't bleed or anything. I informed the biometrics officer about this but they said it wouldn't be an issue. Subsequently, the scans of all 10 digits were taken.

I am a bit concerned. Now that my finger has healed completely, is there any possibility of my fingerprint on the thumb not matching during immigration?

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    Don’t know the specifics for Canada, but there is usually quite a bit of margin of error allowed, and one or two fingers matching are often enough.
    – jcaron
    Commented Apr 20 at 11:04
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    Not a problem. Fingerprint reader are notoriously unreliable and everyone knows it. We recently went to India and immigration was excruciatingly slow: Everyone had to have their prints retaken 4 or 5 times which always require a complete restart of the entire process (passport entry, etc). Eventually everyone got through, most likely not because of acceptable print quality but because it just took too long and the needed to keep the lines moving at least marginally. A Shekou port (Shenzhen) only one of 8 machines was sort of working.
    – Hilmar
    Commented Apr 20 at 13:49

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I've had this issue in a couple of countries, and they were resolved in a variety of ways, depending on the place:

• In Korea they sent me to secondary, took my fingerprints again, played with their computer for a while, and my current fingerprints were reconciliated with their records.

• Try another finger. Hong Kong about once in ten times. I stopped using my fingerprints, and use facial recognition now.

• Try again. Again. Again. Again. Go to secondary (that happened only once). Mainland China. If my fingers are too dry, or slightly damaged, it takes multiple attempts, wetting my fingers, drying them again, wiping the glass, etc...

• Singapore: after 5 attempts at the automated gates, sent to manual counters. A couple of attempts, failed too. Manual override or something.

Bottom line, if they want to ID you, they'll find a way.

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    And another bottom line is: "yes, having fingerprint taken during injury is a real problem"
    – justhalf
    Commented Apr 21 at 10:15

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