Biometric ID and Immigration Reform

Is a Biometric, National ID Card an Immigration Game Changer?

April 30, 2010

Washington Post - The Democrats' immigration-reform proposal (pdf) is 26 pages long. Pages 8 through 18 are devoted to "ending illegal employment through biometric employment verification."

I don't think the Democrats are going to like me calling this a biometric national ID card, as they go to great lengths to say that it is not a national ID card, and make it

"unlawful for any person, corporation; organization local, state, or federal law enforcement officer; local or state government; or any other entity to require or even ask an individual cardholder to produce their social security card for any purpose other than electronic verification of employment eligibility and verification of identity for Social Security Administration purposes."

But it's still a biometric national ID card. It's handed out by the Social Security Administration and employers are required to check it when hiring new employees. Essentially, if you want to participate in the American economy, you need this card.

"Within five (5) years of the date of enactment, the fraud-proof social security card will serve as the sole acceptable document to be produced by an employee to an employer for employment verification purposes," the bill says. "This requirement will exist even if the employer does not yet possess the capability to electronically verify the employee by scanning the card through a card reader."

The theory here is simple: Illegal immigration is a problem because illegal immigrants can get jobs. As the bill says,

"in order to prevent future waves of illegal immigration, this proposal recognizes that no matter what we do on the border, our ports of entry, and in the interior, we will not be completely effective unless we can prevent the hiring, recruitment, or referral of unauthorized aliens in America’s workplaces. Jobs are what draw illegal immigrants to the United States."

That's why some think the biometric ID card a game changer for immigration politics. Enforcement might be popular, but the public knows full well that it doesn't really work. As things stand, the border is pretty militarized but the flow of illegal immigrants hasn't stopped. By focusing on the employment prospects of illegal immigrants and forcing workplaces to use biometric identification, Democrats hope to convince people that they have a real strategy for ending the problem of illegal immigration. And if they can convince people of that, they think they can get a path to legalization for the existing community of illegal immigrants as a way to mop up the remainder of the problem.

The oddity of this strategy, of course, is that anti-immigration sentiments run highest among the same communities that are most opposed to national ID cards. Now, it's also the case that if you're going to support citizenship searches for people with Hispanic-looking shoes, it's a bit odd to worry about an ID card to verify employment. But even so, without Republicans on the bill to give this strategy cover, it'll be interesting to see whether the anti-immigrant right embraces the ID card as a way of staunching the flow of illegal immigrants or assails Democrats for trying to create a biometric police state.

New Jersey Senator Says Obama Must Treat Immigration Reform with Far More Urgency

May 6, 2010

Los Angeles Times - A Democratic leader says the president must treat the overhaul with more urgency. Schumer writes to the Arizona governor, hoping to delay a controversial state law.



A key Senate Democratic leader said President Obama must treat the immigration crisis with far more urgency, as pressure over the issue intensified across the country Thursday.

Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, an Obama ally and one of a handful of Democratic senators shaping an immigration proposal presented last week, faulted the president for suggesting on Wednesday that an immigration bill won't be finished until 2011 at the earliest.

"Telling people we're not going to get a legislative solution this year, or to suggest maybe that it's not possible this year, is not in the best interests of the nation," Menendez said in an interview in the Capitol.

At the same time, legislators and activists took steps Thursday to head off policies that they contend unfairly target illegal immigrants. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked Arizona's governor in a letter to delay enactment of a tough new law that criminalizes the failure to carry immigration papers. Schumer also asked for a meeting with the governor, Republican Jan Brewer.

And one Latino advocacy group, unhappy with what it sees as Obama's aggressive deportation practices, said it would attempt to end-run the president. The group said it would send a Mother's Day letter to First Lady Michelle Obama, telling her that deporting people is destructive to families.

The developments reflected mounting frustration over the immigration question. Speaking at a Cinco de Mayo reception in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, Obama promised to "begin work" on an immigration bill this year, but set no deadline for completion.

His press secretary, Robert Gibbs, sounded a more pessimistic note at a briefing Thursday. Asked why the White House doesn't push ahead with an immigration bill as it has with other legislation that lacked a bipartisan consensus, Gibbs said: "Well, because there's not enough support to move forward."

Even if prospects for an immigration overhaul are dwindling, the White House shouldn't give up, proponents insisted. Menendez said he had asked the White House to host a major summit devoted to the issue, modeled after the healthcare summit in February. Invitations would go to House and Senate lawmakers from both parties, with a block of time set aside for hashing out differences.

A White House official who was asked about that idea Thursday said:

"We are continuing to examine all of the options for moving forward with a bipartisan conversation."

Always a divisive issue, illegal immigration is generating renewed bitterness on the right and left of the political spectrum. Part of the upheaval springs from the Arizona law. But advocates for Latino interests are also resentful of the Obama administration's enforcement policies.

A memo by the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed that the agency wants to deport 400,000 people a year — more than double the number in 2005.

Menendez called on the president to order a less punitive approach. Deporting people when "counting is taking place" during the decennial census is "reason alone" for suspending the practice, he said.

In the hope that Michelle Obama might prove a softer touch, the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities said it would send a letter to the first lady inviting her to intervene.

Michelle Obama has taken a largely apolitical posture since her husband became president. Choosing sides on such a fraught issue would be out of character, but the alliance is appealing to her "as a mother."

"Deportations have reached record levels under President Obama's administration. For each person deported, there are young children left behind who are denied the right to be cared for by their parents," the letter to Michelle Obama reads.

With Arizona's law scheduled to go into effect in July, Schumer hopes to derail it by convincing Brewer that a better solution is on the horizon.

He asked her to wait one year while Congress puts in place an immigration system that would provide tough border security, a foolproof identification system so that undocumented workers can't get jobs, and a path to legal status for the 11 million people living in the United States illegally.

Delaying the Arizona law would require state legislative action. Arizona officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Conceding that Republican support is lacking in the U.S. Senate, Schumer also asked Brewer to help round up GOP votes, including those of Arizona's two senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl. So far, no Republican lawmaker has agreed to support the effort.

Schumer wrote that a comprehensive immigration bill is the best remedy.

"I simply do not believe the remedy Arizona has enacted will succeed in resolving the problem it is designed to address," he wrote.

Public Sees Beyond Hysterics on Immigration

May 2, 2010

Real Clear Politics - "Physician, heal yourself," said the founder of the church in which Roger Mahony is a cardinal. He is the Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles and he should heed the founder's admonition before accusing Arizonans of intemperateness. He says Arizona's new law pertaining to illegal immigration involves "reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation."

"Our highest priority today," he says, "is to bring calm and reasoning to discussions about our immigrant brothers and sisters."

His idea of calm reasoning is to call Arizona's new law for coping with illegal immigration "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law." He also says it is "dreadful," "abhorrent" and a "tragedy," and its assumption is that "immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder and consume public resources."

The problem of illegal immigration is inflaming Mahony, who strongly implies, as advocates for illegal immigrants often do, that any law intended to reduce such illegality is "anti-immigrant." The implication is: Because most Americans believe such illegality should be reduced, most Americans are against immigrants. This slur is slain by abundant facts -- polling data that show Americans simultaneously committed to controlling the nation's southern border and to welcoming legal immigration.

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, said,

"And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

Mahony uncharitably judges Arizona legislators and the constituents they represent to be "mean-spirited." His evident assumption, one quite common today, is that certain ideas cannot be held by any intelligent person of good will.

But what does -- what can -- Mahony mean by asserting that Arizona's law is "useless"? He must believe either it will have no effect on illegal immigration or that any effect must be without social value. He can know neither to be true.

Late night comedians, recalling World War II movies in which Gestapo officers demand "show me your papers," find echoes of fascism in Arizona's belief that there are occasions when police officers can reasonably ask for someone's documentation. On Tuesday, Barack Obama, showing contempt for the professionalism and character of police officers, said:

"Now suddenly if you don't have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you're going to be harassed."

Time was, presidents were held to higher standards than comedians. Today's liberals favor indignation over information, but lawyer Obama must know that since 1952 federal law has said:

"Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him."

In today's debate, the threshold question is: Should the nation have immigration laws? Until 1875, there were none. There are strict libertarians who believe there should be none. But the vast majority who do not favor completely open borders believe there should be some laws restricting who can become residents, and presumably they believe such laws should be enforced.

Once Americans are satisfied that the borders are secure, the immigration policies they will favor will reflect their -- and the law enforcement profession's -- healthy aversion to the measures that would be necessary to remove from the nation the nearly 11 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here for more than five years. It would take 200,000 buses in a bumper-to-bumper convoy 1,700 miles long to carry them back to the border. Americans are not going to seek and would not tolerate the police methods that would be needed to round up and deport the equivalent of the population of Ohio.

Meanwhile, hysteria about domestic fascism is unhelpful, even though it is a liberal tradition. In his 1944 State of the Union address, FDR identified opponents of his domestic agenda as fascists. Declaring that his "one supreme objective" was "security," including "economic security, social security, moral security," he issued a dire warning:

Woodrow Wilson's progressive policies had been frustrated by "rightist reaction" and "if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called 'normalcy' of the 1920s -- then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home."

Today's hysterics are unoriginal. But they learned their bad manners from a master.