Foolish consistency... How the little minds behind Real ID killed the possibility of meaningful immigration reform

gregh — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 21:25:16 -0500

Did Real ID bring down immigration reform? That's probably not the right way to put it.

Are the forces of evil (Sensenbrenner, et al) so incredibly gung ho to track the details of every American who chooses to work that they'll scuttle immigration reform rather than see Real ID go down the tubes? The answer appears to be yes. However, the problem is deeper than immigration; it may extend to your ability to find work, change jobs, and in turn, move freely about the country.

Declan describes how attempted to kill Real ID in the current immigration reform efforts brought a halt to the process in his article, National ID plan may have killed immigration bill:

Privacy advocates were quick to claim that a vote against Real ID cards the previous evening doomed the bill.

Wednesday's vote showed that senators were willing to delete the portion of the labyrinthine immigration bill that would require employers to demand the Real ID cards from new hires. Because some of the bill's backers had insisted that the ID requirement remain in place--as a way to identify illegal immigrants--they were no longer as willing to support the overall bill.

Commentary in that article also comes from the Cato Institute's Jim Harper:

"The proponents of national ID in the Senate weren't getting what they wanted, so they backed away," said Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute who opposes Real ID. "It was a landmine that blew up in their faces."

(By the way, if you're looking for an easy-to-read book with broad coverage of identity issues, I recommend Harper's Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.)

However, it's important to note that another key facet of this immigration reform bill came in the form of pre-employment verification. A database of huge importance that would be run by, of all agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, employers would be forced to query the database preferably before, but certainly shortly after you went to work. In this Huffington Post entry, the ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson explains the system:

For instance, Title III of the bill expands the error-plagued Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS), creating a vast federal database to verify the eligibility to work of all job applicants in America -- including U.S. citizens. This expansive system would contain extraordinary amounts of personal information on everyone who seeks or holds a job, all of it keyed to a person's Social Security number. If the immigration bill passes as written, all Americans will need to have their eligibility to work approved by the Department of Homeland Security. Invariably, DHS will confuse the files of people with similar names or use outdated or erroneous information to deny people the right to work, creating a 'No Work List' similar to the government's 'No Fly List.' They have testified that they will need to "manually reverify" the work-eligibility of eight percent of all workers.

So, we can't get passports out to people to travel, but we'll certainly be able to manually verify 80% of the legally working population in no time. No doubt.

John Gilmore paints a much scarier picture of the growing "In DHS We Trust" phenomenon:

The attempt to force a process of "get federal permission to hire FIRST" on the country is eerily parallel to the DHS proposal to require airlines to "get federal permission to transport FIRST". Today, airlines can bring you to the US without permission, but they are liable for the cost of carrying you elsewhere if the US won't admit you. This naturally limits their willingness to bring random people -- but allows people to come and apply for asylum, for example. The Gestapo announced months ago that they plan to change this to require each passenger's info to be submitted long before the plane takes off, getting an affirmative "OK", or else the passenger would not be allowed on board at all. As with other federal watchlist checks, this would come with zero due process protection for the passenger, and zero accountability for the government. If they mysteriously keep saying "No", there's nothing that you as a citizen could do to get back into your own country. They wouldn't even have to jail or detain you, such that a lawyer could go to court with some urgency to spring you. No, YOU would have to sue THEM, and it would take years in the courts.

In our fervor to regulate and control immigration, we've got to be very wary of those in our legislature who would like to use this opportunity to regulate and control the rest of us. As Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester said after the immigration bill was eventually put out of its misery:

"We scored a major victory today in our efforts to protect privacy and defeat a bad immigration bill at the same time," said Baucus, Montana’s senior U.S. Senator. "If Jon and I just brought down the entire bill, that’s good for Montana and the country."
...
"If by fighting to keep government out of people’s private lives, Max Baucus and I stopped the senate from passing this flawed immigration bill, then this was a real victory for Montana and the American people," Tester said.

Indeed.

Otherwise Occupied - eevs

Foolish consistency... How the little minds behind Real ID killed the possibility of meaningful immigration reform