President Bush’s plan to require tamper-proof, biometric identification cards for guest workers raises the specter of a National ID card, a notion Americans have long rejected based on civil liberty objections, according to several experts.
Bush’s plan and most Senate immigration reform proposals would limit the identification cards to those new workers entering the country legally, but last December the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require U.S. citizens and immigrants seeking jobs to carry electronically readable Social Security cards with photo identification.
In Bush’s version, the card for foreign workers would use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamper-proof.
Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the ACLU, called biometric worker cards a “recipe for disaster.”
Producing massive quantities of identification cards and putting the sensitive information in a database only creates a way to track people, he said. It won’t deter them.
“You’re just creating a great surveillance society,” he said.
Michelle Waslin, of the National Council of La Raza, said requiring immigrants to get a biometric card would likely lead to similar cards for U.S. citizens, otherwise illegal immigrants will get around the new cards simply by using easy-to-make fake Social Security cards.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesman Bruce Josten, who was briefed by the White House before Bush’s speech Monday, said the plan is more palatable to businesses than the House proposal. There are 140 million full-time employees in the U.S. and more than 30 million change jobs each year, he said.
A pilot program lets 3,625 employers use Social Security and Department of Homeland Security databases to verify the employment authorization of all newly hired employees. The program has been fraught with errors, including 22,500 false-positives for foreigners seeking work in the United States, Josten said.
As a result, half the applicants experienced delays and in some cases loss of employment, and employers hesitated to hire foreign workers.
Josh Bernstein, of National Immigration LawCenter, said electronic ID cards for foreign workers are a good idea that could have unintended consequences, such as increasing the risk for identity theft.
“It also puts a powerful tool in the hands of the government,” Bernstein said, “and we have to ask, ‘Do you want to give the government that kind of power over its people?’ ”
Worker numbers
» President Bush proposed tamper-proof identification cards for temporary workers in his speech Monday night.
» There are 8.4 million U.S. employers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
» There are about 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and some 500,000 in the Washington area.
