How many more times do we need to shoot down REAL-ID

At least one more time. Provisions for a national ID card are included in the new Democratic Immigration bill. Not satisfied that we fought against REAL-ID as the answer to terrorism, it’s now being pushed as an answer to illegal immigration. The proposal is called the Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform (REPAIR) proposal and you can read it here [pdf].

The Democratic proposal includes increased money for border patrol and drug war agents, equipment, helicopters and unmanned drones. It would create a national ID — which is dubbed a “biometric social security card.” Though Democrats insist that it is not an ID card and can only be used for employment purposes.

While the proposal states that this will be used only for employment purposes, this is not entirely genuine. This is your social security card. You are required to show it if you open a bank account, apply for insurance, and a host of other companies that use part of the number for identification purposes. There are no clear laws as to when you can and cannot use a social security card for identification.

The crackdown on employers relies on the creation of national identity cards. “These cards will be 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,” reads the bill summary.

I know you want to laugh when you read this statement. The sad reality is that your elected officials honestly believe that biometric ID cards will be resistant to fraud. Israeli scientists showed us last year how easy it is to fake biometrics and RFID, yet we are now to believe that, in a matter of months, they’ve become fraud-proof? If the government enforced the laws already on the books, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

There is no real practical need for American citizens to be required to carry a national ID card. Such a system would cost billions of dollars to implement when, in reality, if you are seriously looking to stop illegal immigration you must fine and close the companies that hire them. You can also make these companies pay the costs of deportation for their illegally hired employees. Once the politics stop and the owners of the companies start being jailed and the fines put the companies at risk of closure, only then will we seriously begin to start tackling the problem of illegal immigration.