Feds Answer to Illegal Immigration is a Biometric National ID

Democrats' Answer to Illegal Immigration is National ID

April 30, 2010

The New American - ...Giving new meaning to the saying “a day late and a dollar short,” on April 29, Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) unveiled their own proposal for reforming federal immigration policies and procedures. The 26-page document is less a proposed bill than a very broad outline for changes the senators and members of their party will push for in Congress ...

The fourth of the eight proposals is perhaps the most pernicious. The proposition has a high propensity for overreaching in direct proportion to its vagueness. The exact wording of the suggestion calls for “improved technology” that will assist ICE in determining eligibility for work in the U.S. While that sounds innocuous enough, later in the document, under the section entitled, “Ending Illegal Employment Through Biometric Employment Verification,” Reid, et al, set forth their chilling scheme to require all Americans to carry a 21st Century version of the Social Security Card. The national identification card will be embedded with biometric data detectable by federal agents. Specifically, the Reid plan will mandate that within 18 months of the passage of immigration reform legislation, every American worker carry the “fraud-resistant, tamper-resistant, wear resistant, and machine-readable social security cards containing a photograph and an electronically coded micro-processing chip which possesses a unique biometric identifier for the authorized card-bearer.”

As if that isn’t enough to freeze the blood of any ally of freedom and our constitutional republic, the Senate sponsors insist that the new identification card will contain the following information, as well:

(1) biometric identifiers, in the form of templates, that definitively tie the individual user to the identity credential;

(2) electronic authentication capability;

(3) ability to verify the individual locally without requiring every employer to access a biometric database;

(4) offline verification capability (eliminating the need for 24-hour, 7-days-per-week online databases);

(5) security features that protect the information stored on the card;

(6) privacy protections that allow the user to control who is able to access the data on the card;

(7) compliance with authentication and biometric standards recognized by domestic and international standards organizations.

Read it and weep, lovers of liberty! ...

Breakdown of the Reid-Schumer-Menendez Immigration Reform Proposal

Schumer, Graham Use Immigration to Push National Biometric ID Card

March 9, 2010

Infowars.com - Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Lindsey Graham have joined forces in an effort to force a biometric ID on the American people. The new national ID scheme is part of a comprehensive immigration bill now in the Senate.

Schumer and Graham want every American worker required to have a biometric ID card in order to work.

“Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

Schumer and Graham, who face an “uphill effort to pass a bill,” plan to meet with Obama this week in order to update him. An administration official told the Journal the White House has no position on the controversial ID card.

Previous efforts to force a national ID on the American people have ended in failure. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Congress took up the idea of requiring every citizen to have a national ID card. Before the election of 2004, the revisited the issue.

Section 403(c) of the Patroit Act specifically requires the federal government to “develop and certify a technology standard that can be used to verify the identity of persons” applying for or seeking entry into the United States on a U.S. visa “for the purposes of conducting background checks, confirming identity, and ensuring that a person has not received a visa under a different name.”

Prior to September 11, 2001, the government pushed for a national biometric identification system. Both the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1995 (PRWOA), a welfare reform law, and the Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996 (ICFRA), an immigration reform law, called for the use of “technology” for identification purposes.

In 2005, Congress passed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, or REAL ID.

“States were originally given until May 2008 to comply with the law, but widespread resistance resulted in the Federal Government changing that deadline not once, not twice, but three times,” notes the Tenth Amendment Center. “More than two dozen states have passed resolutions or binding laws opposing the act, rendering the Bush-era law nearly null and void in practice. Bottom line? Nullification works.”

Senator Graham does not believe his biometric national ID scheme will violate the privacy of Americans.

“We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”

Graham is the only Republican to publicly announce support for a law requiring Americans to hold a biometric national ID card and he wants at least one other GOP co-sponsor to launch the effort.

According to the Journal, biometric data for the card would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next change jobs. Employers would be required to purchase a scanner.

A biometric ID system is not about securing the border or preventing terrorism. It is about tracking citizens.

“By far the most significant negative aspect of biometric ID systems is their potential to locate and track people physically. While many surveillance systems seek to locate and track, biometric systems present the greatest danger precisely because they promise extremely high accuracy. Whether a specific biometric system actually poses a risk of such tracking depends on how it is designed,” explains the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Earlier this month, a biometric ID card was introduced at a large technology show in Hanover, Germany. The card will mandatory for all Germans on November 1, 2010.

“The card has three functions: 1. biometric identity verification, 2. electronic identity verification, 3. authenticated electronic signature,” Fox News reported on March 2.

The Right Way to Mend Immigration

March 19, 2010

Charles E. Schumer and Lindsey O. Graham - Our immigration system is badly broken. Although our borders have become far more secure in recent years, too many people seeking illegal entry get through. We have no way to track whether the millions who enter the United States on valid visas each year leave when they are supposed to. And employers are burdened by a complicated system for verifying workers' immigration status.

Last week we met with President Obama to discuss our draft framework for action on immigration. We expressed our belief that America's security and economic well-being depend on enacting sensible immigration policies.

The answer is simple: Americans overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration and support legal immigration. Throughout our history, immigrants have contributed to making this country more vibrant and economically dynamic. Once it is clear that in 20 years our nation will not again confront the specter of another 11 million people coming here illegally, Americans will embrace more welcoming immigration policies.

Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here.

Besides border security, ending illegal immigration will also require an effective employment verification system that holds employers accountable for hiring illegal workers. A tamper-proof ID system would dramatically decrease illegal immigration, experts have said, and would reduce the government revenue lost when employers and workers here illegally fail to pay taxes.

We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card. Each card's unique biometric identifier would be stored only on the card; no government database would house everyone's information. The cards would not contain any private information, medical information or tracking devices. The card would be a high-tech version of the Social Security card that citizens already have.

Prospective employers would be responsible for swiping the cards through a machine to confirm a person's identity and immigration status. Employers who refused to swipe the card or who otherwise knowingly hired unauthorized workers would face stiff fines and, for repeat offenses, prison sentences.

We propose a zero-tolerance policy for gang members, smugglers, terrorists and those who commit other felonies after coming here illegally. We would bolster recent efforts to secure our borders by increasing the Border Patrol's staffing and funding for infrastructure and technology. More personnel would be deployed to the border immediately to fill gaps in apprehension capabilities.

Other steps include expanding domestic enforcement to better apprehend and deport those who commit crimes and completing an entry-exit system that tracks people who enter the United States on legal visas and reports those who overstay their visas to law enforcement databases.

Ending illegal immigration, however, cannot be the sole objective of reform. Developing a rational legal immigration system is essential to ensuring America's future economic prosperity.

Ensuring economic prosperity requires attracting the world's best and brightest. Our legislation would award green cards to immigrants who receive a PhD or master's degree in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. university. It makes no sense to educate the world's future inventors and entrepreneurs and then force them to leave when they are able to contribute to our economy.

Our blueprint also creates a rational system for admitting lower-skilled workers. Our current system prohibits lower-skilled immigrants from coming here to earn money and then returning home. Our framework would facilitate this desired circular migration by allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can show they were unsuccessful in recruiting an American to fill an open position; allowing more lower-skilled immigrants to come here when our economy is creating jobs and fewer in a recession; and permitting workers who have succeeded in the workplace, and contributed to their communities over many years, the chance to earn a green card.

For the 11 million immigrants already in this country illegally, we would provide a tough but fair path forward. They would be required to admit they broke the law and to pay their debt to society by performing community service and paying fines and back taxes. These people would be required to pass background checks and be proficient in English before going to the back of the line of prospective immigrants to earn the opportunity to work toward lawful permanent residence.

The American people deserve more than empty rhetoric and impractical calls for mass deportation. We urge the public and our colleagues to join our bipartisan efforts in enacting these reforms.

Charles E. Schumer is a Democratic senator from New York. Lindsey O. Graham is a Republican senator from South Carolina.