The Latest Excuse for a National ID Card

 By Richard Sobel and Michael Ostrolenk
Published 05/18/11

Whatever your views about Immigration Reform, the "Comprehensive" part of recent proposals means imposition of a national identification scheme on American citizens. A little-known core provisions of the “Schumer-Graham” proposal mandates a biometric worker ID system: it requires a national ID card with two-biometric features, and computer tracking system for all U.S. "workers." That means most American citizens would have to carry a national ID.

The U.S. labor force of 160 million men and women dwarfs the estimated 10 million "illegal immigrants." Yet every employable citizen would have to be dually biometricizes-fingerprinted and digitally photographer, perhaps retina scanned. Every “worker” would have to get a "tamper-proof" ID card and have to carry it whenever working on a job. It would have to be produced on demand by employers or government inspectors.

Since the 1930s, multiple schemes for a national ID systems have been rationalized as ways to ferret out fascist or communist infiltration, streamline government services, stop terrorism, or end illegal immigration. New justifications and foolproof schemes pop up every few years like outbreaks of mushrooms. Every one is aimed at the "bad guys," but each one actually undermines the fundamental freedoms of the "good guys." A national ID would compromise what it means to be an American citizen.

Furthermore, this scheme one would even "bait-and-switch" legal immigrants: expecting to shred their green cards on naturalization, they (and other "legal" workers) would instead get shackled to red-and-blue cards. Worker IDs would also become a hugely expensive waste of tax dollars, no doubt tens of billions of dollars more than any large estimate.

Whatever you think is the solution to illegal immigration -- from tall walls to open borders, to guest worker contracts -- a national ID system won't solve the problems. Countries like China and Germany have both strict household registration system and national ID card requirements and bureaucracies. But they still have extensive illegal immigration problems. Both are centralized state provider of order and services, though the Federal Republic is a democracy. Neither represents the American way.

Rationalized and ineffective, a national ID system sadly, too, reverses the proper relationship of consent of the governed to government. Rather than the people delegating democratic power by consent, in a national identification system, the ID imposing government gives, and can take away, consent for the subjects to have identities, rights and benefits. Like the individual health insurance mandate, worker ID systems are the state telling citizens what rights they have, or don't have, to prosper and how to manage their lives in their best interests. Neither is a proper government position.

If you don't like health insurance mandates, you won't like mandatory biometric national worker IDs. Whatever your views of the benefits of immigration reform, any proposal needs to drop the worker ID schemes from consideration. Like arguments for nationalizing the driver's licenses in "Real IDs," the debate around IDs to end illegal immigration, is just another excuse for an unnecessary, outlandishly expensive, compromised and detrimental federal program. Here’s a chance to let your government know now that you oppose any form of a national ID plan.