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Dems Spark Alarm with Call for National ID Card
A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation's immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) passes through a security checkpoint at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago March 15, 2010. (UPI/Brian Kersey) Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation
to carry a national identification card with biometric information,
such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft
of the measure.
The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.
It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases."The cardholder's identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer," states the Democratic legislative proposal.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.
"Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy - one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA," said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.
"America's broken immigration system needs real, workable reform, but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms," Calabrese added.
The ACLU said "if the biometric national ID card provision of the draft bill becomes law, every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted."
A source at one pro-immigration reform group described the proposal as "Orwellian."
But Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), who has worked on the proposal and helped unveil it at a press conference Thursday, predicted the public has become more comfortable with the idea of a national identification card.
"The biometric identification card is a critical element here," Durbin said. "For a long time it was resisted by many groups, but now we live in a world where we take off our shoes at the airport and pull out our identification.
"People understand that in this vulnerable world, we have to be able to present identification," Durbin added. "We want it to be reliable, and I think that's going to help us in this debate on immigration."
Implementing a nationwide identification program for every worker will be a difficult task.
The Social Security Administration has estimated that 3.6 million Americans would have to visit SSA field offices to correct mistakes in records or else risk losing their jobs.
Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the biometric identification provision "will give some people pause."
But she applauded Democrats for not shying away from the toughest issues in the immigration reform debate.
"What I like about the outline is that Democrats are not trying to hide the ball or soft-pedal the tough decisions," Kelley said. "It seems a very sincere effort to get the conversation started. This is a serious effort to get Republicans to the table."
Reform Immigration for America, a pro-immigrant group, praised Democrats for getting the discussion started but said the framework fell short.
"The proposal revealed today [Thursday] is in part the result of more than a year of bipartisan negotiations and represents a possible path forward on immigration reform," the group said in a statement. "This framework is not there yet."
Democrats and pro-immigration groups will now begin to put pressure on Republicans to participate in serious talks to address the issue. The bipartisan effort in the Senate suffered a serious setback when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pulled back from talks with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
"We call on Republican Senators to review this framework and sit down at the negotiating table in good faith," Reform Immigration for America said in a statement. "This is a national problem that requires a federal solution and the input of leaders in both parties."
Durbin said Democratic leaders are trying to recruit other Republican partners.
"We're making a commitment to establishing a framework to work toward comprehensive immigration reform, and I think it's a good framework and now we're engaging our friends on the other side of the aisle to join us in this conversation," Durbin said.
106 Comments so far
Show AllThis notion has been predicted for years...notably in Aaron Russo's fine film "Freedom to Fascism."
The forces of oppression are relentless. They will never give up until they have total and complete control of the populace. They're patient and clever enough to tighten the noose around our throats using a rationale people willingly embrace.
Anyone see any sign of hope out there?
not this baboon
we are at least twenty years
past where elections could save us.
Thanks for mentioning that fine movie. I just watched it again a little while ago when the bankster atrocities first started making headlines. Everything in that film is coming true or has come true. Unless we the people really wake up and get rid of this system (and no, voting out Democrats to vote in Republicans isn't going to do it) we are doomed. The real challenge is how to get the people to come together again in common interest rather than the massive splintering we have now that totally prevents acting together in common cause.
No sign of hope. I've been around a long time, and it's been getting worse all along. The sixties were a brief reprieve when we (some of us) could get stoned and have some fun, and the music took a turn for the better, but then came the 70s and 80s. It seemed we had a chance back then, but we were too middle class and spoiled not to blow it. I thought lessons learned from the VietNam experience would do us some good, but they didn't do a damn thing. It's really mind blowing to think that some of the crap going down now is coming from those who had long hair and stoned out smiles.
Thanks for a well-said statement about the 1960's, generally. The only good things about the 1960's, imho, were the movies and the music!
Vote out all incumbents, Dems and Repubs, until we get a Congress whose legislative record strongly represents the interests of the American People. View Congress as a team, not as individuals.
Stone, see Baboon's post above. Voting won't save us. It never could. Hell, if working within the system could really change it, it would've been illegal a long time ago! Why can't we just fight them, scrap this thing and start something new? Why are we so afraid of suffering a little bit in the short term for a huge long term gain? I'll never understand Amurrikans.
Amen!
I understand what you are saying B_A. My thought was that it might slow down the wholesale sellout that is now going on in Congress. Why make their lives easy. Get rid of the incumbents. That effort would buy some time for the changes taking place at the bottom to gain traction and provide more survivability to more people as we traverse the empire in decline.
DARKNESS -- PRETENSE OF GOOD HIDING MISERY
PRETENSE OF GOOD
If we want true democracy, we must give our democratic
government full and complete control of society.
MISERY
As evidenced by our 51% top income earners all having
great jobs, terrific homes and deluxe healthcare,
democracy will always be ruled by the 51% highest achievers.
Surely, and the more control democracy has over the 49%
laboring class, the more brutal and oppressive will life be
for those who hard labor generate all of society’s wealth.
Don't know where you get your 51% Truth_Light. A little behind the times, aren't you? But I get the general idea.
idiots
Hey, c'mon! Look at the upside.
Think of all those credit cards and customer-loyalty cards filling up your wallet. Once this database is in place, every employer (including all retailers, of course) will need access to it. And once they have that access, they can identify us as individual consumers by our biometric information -- you can throw all that plastic away.
Then their marketing departments will have truly complete profiles of not just what we buy, but where we go, who we speak to, who we vote for, what opinions we hold, whether we're doing our part to support the consumer economy which is so critical to the security of this great nation.
Privacy is over-rated, anyways. If you're not breaking the law, you really don't need it.
Trust me.
But you don’t understand, the rich who have always ruled
our Empire, now think that only the top 51% income earners
should occupy our Empire. And government knowing your
income, will be able to waste you if to low be your income.
Black_Anarch:
“Why can't we just fight them, scrap this thing (democracy)
and start something new?”
But surely, your talking about wasting the 51% top
income earners, the rulers of society.
Problem is, they for a long time have been talking
about wasting us, and as they have the nukes not us,
would not humility be the best course for us?
Now I know you think it silly, but when this world
has reached the end of its folly, an earth made
new will there be just for the oppressed like you and me.
"If shit were worth something, poor people would have no assholes." - Eddie Murphy, 48 Hours.
That's very funny, but in China human shit is worth a lot and there have been fortunes made from it.
China?
It's also a spot-on description of Wall Street, USA!
Granted, equating banksters with HUMAN shit is probably too generous. ;)
We all knew this was coming. Next will be RFID chips to track us like cattle. The police are already controlling us like we are livestock. Shock prods, freedom cages, mass hearding of wrong thinking herdees.
Wake up, this IS Fascism!!!! How much more are we or the rest of the world going to take? If America, WE, don't clean up our house, don't bitch when someone comes in and does it for us.
Yes, and that is the real issue,
how much longer can our nukes keep
a vengeance driven world at bay?
As generalcommentator already pointed out..Aaron Russo's film covered this very topic,in great length and detail.Fear and insecurity sure have a way to bolster support for themselves huh?.
rjmart: haha....but seriously,thats probably a future ad campaign.
In a perfect world, I would welcome this policy.
But, looking at how screwed up the US and State Governments are, I will never agree with this proposal.
This government belongs in jail along with Goldman Sachs et al.
National ID card is a canard.
Businesses who today hire illegal immigrants will continue to do so after this ID card program.
The government should stop attributing blame to the immigrants and workers.
Rather, law enforcement should heavily penalize businesses who knowingly hire illegal immigrants (agriculture, construction, hospitality, home reno).
Please, someone, explain to me how Obomber is not a Fascist.
Notice these cards are only for the worker ants the uberrich Drones stay free.
BELIEVE how freakin Orwellian can you get.
We are already regressing further than the horrors of "1984"
How could Orwell and Huxley have been so prescient?
Orwell worked for the BBC; that gave him a lot of experience with self censorship. As for Huxley, I don't know.
Huxley was a genius, and he was one of the first to experiment with LSD (read The Doors of Perception).
Aldous Huxley, grandson of "Darwin's bulldog" zoologist T.H.Huxley, brother of biologist Julian Huxley, first Director of UNESCO, member and president of the British Eugenics Society.
Calm down everyone. I am one of the most rebellious and anti govt. people you will ever meet. that said, this is not such a bad idea. The information on the national ID card would not be anything that is not already known by credit card companies or on a passport or drivers license etc. As i have stated before, when i lived in Germany, my wife explained to me that their immigration problem that the country had with undocumented foreign workers almost bankrupt the govt. until they instituted a national id card to assist in slowing down illegal aliens. it worked VERY WELL and has not caused any increased control, perceived or other wise on the populous.
Ok, i'm finished, now you can let me have it.
first of all i am disappointed at the lack of intensity in the retorts. Second, the biggest difference when it comes to enforcement of existing or new legislation is that the German people tend to police their govt. its laws and themselves with far more unity and intensity than americans. For example on immigration, arresting and deporting people who do not have a national ID card is only a small part of the solution. the real crux of the problem is supply and demand. the employers in this country routinely break the law by hiring illegal aliens, where as in europe this is happening to a much lesser degree. the people in this country are afraid of their govt. whereas in many parts of Europe it is the opposite. We are a bunch of apathetic babies.
"Even though you may think that the pesky ACLU is always sounding the alarm on petty stuff." Well thanks for the word "may" in that sentence. On the contrary, i think that the ACLU is one of the few organizations in this country that actually does their job. i hold them in the highest regard. There are down sides to everything including a national Id card. It is up to the people to monitor the negative impacts not just create legislation for protections but create a national collective awareness that creates fear in the hearts of politicians, police, military, corporations etc.
It is a bad idea, and in the United States it would be a disaster-for the reasons you state. I for one will never agree to it, nor will I ever carry an I.D. other than my driver's license. I will commit suicide first. Is that intense enough for you?
Please look up the Real ID Act of 2005. This is a law passed by Republican led congress and signed into law by G.W. Bush forcing states to make all IDs and DLs comply with FEDERAL standards and to share their databases. Only because of resistance by the states do we not have a "National ID system" already! This is not a "new" or "liberal Democrat" idea. Were you yelling "unfair!" THEN??
Germany doesn't tolerate corporate abuses whereas America.
Sioux Rose
Terry Gilliam also saw THIS one coming. If friends in the forum have not yet seen it, the film BRAZIL is a classic for how a society undermines itself when it makes fear its ruling ethos... added to the always Keystone-cops slapstick element of how these systems ACTUALLY operate, glitches and all, as opposed to how they are sold to the government, and those in line to make a killing from their implementation. We get to increasingly pay for the tools that imprison us. Land of the free... Ha!
We've never been a land of the free. It's just that the bill is growing steeper by the minute.
I just thought of this film today...BUGGLES!!!
"Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the biometric identification provision "will give some people pause."
But she applauded Democrats for not shying away from the toughest issues in the immigration reform debate. "
And this is where the fallacy of division and dishonesty by still supporting the Democratic Party at this begins. It's just a fallacy to believe that the Democrats can somehow be transformed into a political force defending the interests of the broader public. That's not what they are. That they dare posture as the "party of the people" is an insult to our collective intelligence. In reality, they use this tattered & tired popular image to collude with the rightwing, confuse the public, & sell us out at every turn. Then we have people who don't bother to remember or pick up red flags foreshadowing upcoming disasters such as this. Remember the FISA vote in 2008? Neither the Republican nor Democratic voters took it seriously so it should be no surprise to see the Democrats following the Republicans on National ID Card. Don't expect the same Obama conservatives to speak against the National ID Card like they used to when Bush was president though.
There is a good idea embedded in this bill, and a silly one.
The good idea is to stop the flow of workers from other nations who don't have permission to be here or work here, by preventing future non-citizens from working here. A combination of a citizenship ID and penalties to employers who hire or employ workers who lack such IDs could stop the future flow of the ultra-low-wage, blackmailable, nonvoting workers. That could stabilize rising wages for all legal US workers.
If that happened SOON AFTER an amnesty program for those non-citizen workers who are here now, (who we won't and shouldn't deport), the flow would virtually stop. Current undocumented people could apply for and get citizenship on a fast track.
The silly idea is the NEW national ID card. Silly because we already have one. It costs $75 and is good for 10 years. It is called a passport.
I have no problem (after the amnesty) requiring all workers (including me) to have a passport, with a penalty for employers of jail and big fines if they fail to abide by such a law.
"The good idea is to stop the flow of workers from other nations who don't have permission to be here or work here, by preventing future non-citizens from working here."
WTF! That is simply racist xenophobic nonsense. Not to mention it would destroy California's economy, and others that depend on immigrant labor. Watch what happens to the racist state of Arizona when we unite to fight their police state.
Repeal NAFTA! Tear down the borders! Free movement of people, not capital! Down with the U.S. Empire!
And you can get a real passport with a fake birth certificate, but don't try it unless you are really desparate.
It is quite ironic the Arizona forces of Tea Bagging regression have brought forth in a serious way the concept of a national identity card, as their legislation makes said ID's a virtual necessity for fair enforcement by police. I am quite sure that they thought that mere appearance would be enough to constitute justifiable probable cause to ask for documentation, when the complexity and variety of those who hold US citizenship and green cards is well beyond such simple precepts.
As mentioned by others prior, national identity cards are an everyday fact of life in most other First World countries (especially European Union ones), and have generally proven to be an effective tool to keep illegals out of the "formal" workplace. On the other hand, it has created a nether world "informal" workplace (mostly in the restaurant, hotel, & agriculture sectors, as well as providing foot soldiers for crime syndicates) where they are abused and cheated as a matter of course.
What a national identity card provides to government is a centralized database of its' population. Given the US government's history of nefariousness and incompetence with a sliver of such information (Palmer Raids, No Fly lists, etc.), I loath that they be given a substantial tool for repression.
“1984” -- 34 YEARS BEFORE ITS TIME
One year before his death in 1950, George Orwell published
a book entitled 1984.
And so, 1984 was on or about year that High Finance got a
strangle hold on our economy, the year when clearly visible
was our make believe government and all the paid actor
politicians within, and the year when our capitalist dictatorship
could no longer be discussed only behind closed doors.
So since the 1984 epic turning point in Empire USA, all the
propaganda coming at us from government and corporate
media has been about how competition based capitalism is
the best for our economy considering how self-absorbed
and independent is the society we live in.
And so, someone here should publish a book entitled 2011,
what with all parameters of our Empire about to expire in a
convulsion, as my window into reality shows a vision, that for
all the grateful then comes an earth made new just like heaven.
Predator Drones are already flying over some American cities.
http://publicintelligence.net/drone-aircraft-are-patrolling-u-s-cities/
So you can just bet what will happen when an 'illegal' makes a run for it.
PS - Bush floated the same national ID card idea with nary a whisper of protest from the right wing. Seems kinda hypocritical now that Barry's doing it, don't you think?
This is going to get every co100n0s0piracy end-timer going for good reason. A national id card WITH biometric data? It all just seems like every actor in this drama -- the government, the corporations, the tea-partiers, the anti-immigration agitators, and Al Qaeda are all in on the game to create the conditions for this totalitarian future.
Seig Heil
This gives entirely new meaning to "I don't got to show you no stinkink badgech"
Just guess what will happen if you don't.
Of course, it doesn't seem to matter how unconstitutional it is.
We are NOT required to carry papers(etal).
Um, what?
I had to have my state ID (I don't drive) and my Social Security guard photocopied just to work at McDonald's a few years ago. How in the hell is this necessary?
I was thinking the same thing.
Hello people, this is not a National ID Card it is not like the European Cards,
It is only for worker ants, the underclass,
the uberrich drones remain free.
Only the laboring class, only the
49% without a high school diploma.
Excuse me, but there are plenty of laboring class people who have a high school diploma, not to mention quite a few who have college degrees!