Ezra Klein reports that the new Democratic immigration proposal includes a shiny new way to enforce employment laws:
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.
I’ve written about this before, and it’s fine with me if they call it a national ID card. I’m in favor. It’s not as if these things are security panaceas or anything, but they’d be pretty useful for things like reducing employment fraud or voter fraud. And what are the drawbacks? Every time this comes up I hear lots of vague but alarming talk about police states and the end of liberty, but nothing concrete about how this would really change things much from the status quo ante, in which most of us have to produce IDs multiple times a day merely to get through our lives. As for making it easier for the federal government to track us, please. They already have all the tools they need to track us. It’s called a Social Security number. A non-fakable Social Security number would be an improvement, not a further infringement on our liberty.
The main difference a national ID would make is that if the federal government provided these cards free of charge, then poor people would have a reliable form of ID too, not just rich and middle class folks. Could they be abused? Sure, but no more than our current hodgepodge of SSNs and corporate ID cards. Other countries seem to have them without descending into totalitarianism.
Unfortunately, as Ezra says, this whole thing is a nonstarter: “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.” There’s not much chance of this proposal getting anywhere.
