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People and Politics


People and Politics

by Patrick Roberts

Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2010 at 02:25 PM


New immigration reform bill will have national identity card



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A national identity card for employers to check is at the heart of the new immigration reform legislation being proposed by Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York and Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.

All legal U.S. workers would be issued with the ID card which would have a biometric identification impossible to duplicate.

Schumer and Graham were due to meet President Obama this week to discuss their immigration reform plan which would also allow those here illegally to stay and gain a path to citizenship. However, Graham's plane flight from South Carolina was canceled and the meeting was postponed.

Schumer says the national identity card is the key to getting a bill passed "It's the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking," Schumer said in an interview in the Wall Street Journal . The card, he said, would make it impossible for any new illegals to find work. "If you say they can't get a job when they come here, you'll stop it." he stated.would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

However some civil liberty groups object to the card idea. "It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."

Senator Graham disagrees. "We've all got Social Security cards," he said. "They're just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That's all I'm saying."

President Obama says he wants to see a bipartisan effort before he will tackle the issue.However, Graham to date is the only Republican signing up for the new bill and it faces an uphill struggle.



Most recent of 27 comments - See all comments

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No pathway to citizenship for the illegal aliens. You go home and enter the country legally.
ILLEGAL aliens are not immigrants, they are criminals. National ID is totalitarianism. We are on the road to serfdom due to our past tolerance of evil illegal alien activity for too long. Bye Bye America.
Tongue in cheek moment: please explain what ""illegal aliens"" look like. Are they little green persons with antennae?; or blobs of gelatinous stuff that sci-fi movies created? I really would like to know what to look for. NOW on the other hand, do you mean illegal immigrants?
Thank you Irish and Proud for sharing this info. As you already guessed I am not computer literate, so every little bit of info is a big help to me.
Oh...important...you must first HIGHLIGHT your entire post before hitting 'control' 'c'...otherwise it won't copy it.
(continued) You can save yourself much grief in this process by hitting 'Control' 'C' (for 'copy') BEFORE you hit the 'comment' button...that way if it gives you that annoying 'comment has been sent' notice, you can simply go back to the comment box and hit 'Control' 'V', which will re-paste your entire article. Then, you can edit for length, and/or send the remainder on a follow-up post. Pesky stuff to have to do, but it's a way around this.






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