Sensible immigration reform will strengthen American society and economy. But it must also respect the rights of U.S. citizens and those aspiring to join them.
Buried in the
comprehensive immigration reform legislation before the Senate are
obscure provisions that impose on Americans expansive national
identification systems, tied to electronic verification schemes. Under
the guise of "reform," these trample fundamental rights and freedoms.
Requirements in Senate
Bill 744 for mandatory worker IDs and electronic verification remove the
right of citizens to take employment and "give" it back as a privilege
only when proper proof is presented and the government agrees. Such
systems are inimical to a free society and are costly to the economy and
treasury.
Any citizen wanting to
take a job would face the regulation that his or her digitized
high-resolution passport or driver's license photo be collected and
stored centrally in a Department of Homeland Security Citizenship and
Immigration Services database.
The pictures in the
national database would then need to be matched against the job
applicant's government-issued "enhanced" ID card, using a Homeland
Security-mandated facial-recognition "photo tool." Only when those
systems worked perfectly could the new hire take the job.
Immigrant employees would
probably have to get biometric (based on body measurements like
fingerprint scans and digital images) worker ID cards. Social Security
cards may soon become biometric as well. Any citizen or immigrant whose
digital image in the Homeland Security databank did not match the one
embedded in their government-issued ID would be without a job and
benefits.
Yet, citizens have a
constitutional right to take employment. Since the Butchers Union Co.
decision in 1884, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that "the right to
follow any of the common occupations of life is an inalienable right ...
under the phrase 'pursuit of happiness.' " This right is a large
ingredient in the civil liberties of each citizen.
The digital ID requirements
in S. 744 eliminate that fundamental right to take employment and
transform it into a privilege. This constitutional guarantee could in
effect be taken away by bureaucratic rules or deleted by a database
mistake.
As philosopher John
Locke, whose phrase "consent of the governed" animates the Declaration
of Independence, once said, everybody "has a property in his own
person." Who is a citizen is today determined by his or her American
personhood. Under S. 744, that would no longer be true.
Instead, the
determination of whether someone has a right to take a job would be made
by two computer files: one in a Department of Homeland Security
database and the other on a government-issued ID card. Identity and IDs
become "property of the U.S. government."
Moreover, S. 744
undermines constitutional federalism by resurrecting ID provisions that
most states have rejected. Not only does S. 744 mandate "E-Verify" as a
national electronic verification system for employment for the 33 states
that have not joined it (Illinois actually outlawed its use), the bill
also revives the moribund "Real ID"
requirement for sharing of driver's license photos among the states and
federal government, which 25 states opposed by law or resolution. Only
13 states joined as of last year.
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