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Congress Debating "No-Work" Database
grag writes "Cnet is reporting that the US Congress, in their quest for immigration reform, seeks to force employers to utilize a database to determine a person's eligibility for employment. The Department of Homeland Security would operate the database and would be given access to IRS records for this purpose. The article mentions similarities between this proposal and the no-fly list — and the expectation of similar difficulties the proposed database could pose to valid people seeking employment."
This won't affect illegal immigrants working. Employers know they aren't elligible to work, they choose to employ them not just because they are cheaper labor, but because they do better work than the unionized workers here in the states.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
...a list of 535 people who do no work.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
You know, this may be being implemented with the best of intentions (stopping illegal workers, etc), but do we really want to give the government an easy way to "flip a switch" (or bit) and make it impossible for any one person to earn a living?
.... due process that the local police arresting someone would.
This isn't just a "don't fly" list, and I suspect that in its initial incarnation it wouldn't have the same
If not this government what about the one that is elected five years from now? Nine? What about the (admittedly hypothetical) government that is elected in 2020 that wants to prevent convicted felons from holding certain classes of jobs (more so than stigma already does?) Political dissidents?
There's a variety of "no work" databases out there. As a healthcare organization, we're required to check them or else we'll lose our Medicare status. For example, there's one that lists people who have been convicted of fraud. If we employ them, we could lose our Medicare reimbursement.
From a database perspective, the problem is making some automated process to make this work. Most lists I've seen don't have SSN, so you have to do crazy name matches. Of course, people convicted of fraud always use their real name, right?
Putting civil liberties aside, from a straight technical standpoint it would be great if everyone had a unique identifier and people would give lists that have these unique identifiers. I realize people have heart attacks over SSN, but there's nothing else out there at the moment (and it drives me nuts when banks use knowing SSN as proof-of-identity).
I'm not advocating we switch to some "everyone gets a number" society, but it's equally silly to pass laws requiring us to check lists of names and not expect it to be wildly inaccurate.
OK, so I can go to jail for hiring someone that isn't a citizen, but right now I have no way to find-out if they are a citizen. The only thing I have is a copy John Smith's SS card that may or may not be real along with his W-4 that I have no way of verifying. I'm in NC and any illegal can get a drivers license here so every illegal I hire has a photo ID with a name that matches their usually bogus paperwork. I've probably found five dozen guys that couldn't spell the name on their NC driver's license. If they happen to reuse the same SSN as an existing employee then I'll know an existing employee is illegal so I can fire them and not hire the new guy, but that doesn't happen often. Again, I have no legal way to tell the difference. So if the Federal government finally gives me an additional tool then that helps protect myself and my wife when the feds eventually return to arrest me again for hiring illegals. Even if the tool doesn't help in reality, it at least gives me an additional defense to use in court. "But I did everything I possibly could to verify their status before hiring them. I even checked against the no-work database."
It just sucks being held criminally liable to verify something that I can't verify. I want to do the right thing.
PS: Before some racist person claims I shouldn't hire Mexicans, I'm not. I'm hiring mostly white or SE Asian guys that speak good English for retail jobs. Most of them are from eastern Europe or India. I live about equidistant from UNC, NC State, and Duke so there are a lot of foreigners here legally.
This didn't stop the Catholic part of my family from hiding Jews from the Nazis during WW II. And the stakes for that were much higher -- probably shot to death or sent to a camp along with your family if you got caught.
Stupid laws should be broken. Just try hard not to get caught.
-b.
Somehow I feel that "love of freedom" isn't quite the right term here.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Sounds like it.
The amount of abuse this database would be open to... urgh. Off the top of my head:
1. Government departments hire a lot of people who have write access to these databases.
2. It is SOP that a record added to the database is not automatically brought to the attention of someone else to check.
3. It is also common for the procedures to get off the database are substantially more complicated than the procedures to get on it.
4. The people mentioned in 1. above are humans. They're corruptible, they have emotions.
5. So, all I need to do to really screw you over is bribe such a person to add your name to the "do not work" list. It may not affect you now, but in 6 months/a year/5 years time...
At least when you're issued papers, they generally suffice and it's pretty hard for someone to take them off you.
I'm sure others can come up with more imaginative abuses of the system.
My ancestors came here via Ellis Island, legally.
I'm sure all Native Americans would agree that European settlement in the US was always done by the book, right?
I cannot condemn a person for breaking a law that I, in their position, would break myself. This country was founded by those who believed that unjust law was no law at all. "It's the law" is a empty position if you cannot justify the law itself.
Roman Kingdom (753 BC - 510 BC) ............ Colonial America (1500's - 1776)
Roman Republic (509 BC - 44 BC) ............ United States (1776 - ~1950's)
Roman Empire (44 BC - 369 AD) .............. United States (~1950's - ???)
I think an analogy can be made between the Roman Republic and the US up until the mid-50's or so. However, this also suggests that the current nation is more like the Roman Empire, where taxes are high, the rich get richer and the poor poorer (and the middle class being squeezed more and more into the later group), and the people have less and less input into the national government every year. The military gets squeezed, and will be unable to respond when it needs to.
The decline of the Roman Empire was a gradual process. After thriving for hundreds of years, the Empire was begun to fail by 369 AD for a number of reasons.
What is the US National Debt now? $3 Trillion? Someday in the not too distant future, this is going to come back and bite us.
I wish I had to pay only a third of my money in taxes. Between Federal, State, Local (Property Taxes), FICA, Medicare, etc., I figure that approximately 46% of my income never sees my wallet.
Can we say juicy government contracts? And it is becoming more and more common for States to try to attract large businesses by offering tax and other "incentives".
See spending priorities.
Well, at least the Vandals didn't fly a jet plane into the colosseum.
And in the last few presidential elections, I have concluded that our system is almost defunct. BOTH sides tend to nominate candidates that cater to the most extreme elements of their respective party. We end up with a executive who doesn't represent the people.
'Nuff said.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I'm sure all Native Americans would agree that European settlement in the US was always done by the book, right?
By the book of the day it was. But that's kinda not part of this debate is it?
I cannot condemn a person for breaking a law that I, in their position, would break myself.
I may not condemn them but I don't condone them either.
"It's the law" is a empty position if you cannot justify the law itself.
I think of all sorts of reasons to justify why illegal immigration is bad. It strains our social infrastructure, our health care infrastructure and our law enforcement agencies. It creates an entire class of people that depend on the services of the nation but don't contribute toward those services (taxes). It creates an entire class of people that can be exploited by businesses and criminals alike with no protection from either.
It's also blatantly unfair to those who decided to come here legally. A Canadian friend of mine has been waiting to come here for months. She has going through a paperwork nightmare from hell to get her green card. This is in spite of the fact that she has a masters degree and speaks three languages. We make her wait even though she is well educated, has family and a job waiting for her but we are willing to give amnesty to those that break our laws? What kind of message does that send?
This is the one issue that you would find agreement on across most sections of the political spectrum. Ask the common man on the street if this is a problem that needs to stop and he will say yes. It doesn't matter if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Unfortunately our political leaders have failed us miserably on this issue. The Republicans are owned by big business that likes cheap labor and the Democrats are owned by the PC crowd that feels bad for them and is afraid of being labeled racists. Both parties want the Hispanic vote.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
s/could be/would be/
Has there ever been a case of a government database which hasn't been misused? If this law passes, it's only a question of how many are going to get burned, not whether it's going to happen.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Social security numbers were designed in an era before modern concepts of error control had been developed. Shannon didn't do his work on information theory until World War II, and social security was set up before that.
Social security numbers have no check digits. Any common error on a social security number (such as changing a digit or transposing digits) can result in another valid social security number.
The system was set up to handle accounts for old-age retirement and for support of children after the death of the breadwinner ("survivors insurance"). It was never intended to serve as a national personal identifier, and does that job very poorly.
This proposal will only compound the problems of using 70-year-old technology, originally designed for a limited purpose, for uses far beyond its originally intended use.
The use of social security numbers as personal identifiers is an Achilles' heel of this proposal.
The real issue is Homeland Security getting their grubby, dirty, little hands onto the IRS database.
As it works right now, Only the IRS has access to income records.
So, if the FBI wanted to catch someone, they oculd go to the IRS and ask "Has this person paid taxes." The IRS can say Yes or NO. Or the IRS can go to the FBI and say person X hasn't paid taxes, please go get them."
That is how it works and should work.
SO you could right down 50,000 income - Bank robbery. No investigation will happen.
I know, some people will be like "No Way" but I dealt with this for years, and I am sure there are plenty of online sources that will coroberate.
Homeland security needs to be done away with, now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's already happening with the no-fly list. A Princeton professor who gave a televised speech criticizing Bush's constitutional overreach found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. A guy who wrote a book called "Bush's Brain" about Karl Rove found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. 20 Wisconsin peace activists suddenly found themselves on the no-fly list .
The no-fly list is even being used to harass opposition political party members. Senator Ted Kennedy suddenly found himself on the no-fly list and had a lot of trouble getting himself off the list. The head of the TSA had to call him personally and promise to take him off the list before his troubles ended. In the same article, it talks about employees of the ACLU also ending up on the list.
Giving the government more secret and anonymous "lists" to deny people rights is not an invitation to abuse, it's a guarantee of it. The fact that systems like this from previous fascist governments are being implemented in modern-day America is one reason that people are arguing that America is on a well-planned transition to fascism.
But white-collar and legal workers will be more likely to be checked through the database. And in the wrong hands, the database could be used to enforce a blacklist of people not allowed to work for various reasons.
I wonder what else will be in this database besides "not allowed" to work. I'd be afraid that eventually it'll turn into something where you have a "work score" similar to a credit score. Maybe I'm just paranoid because I spent five years unable to get a decent job before finding out the government has me listed as a felon. A year after notifying them of their error I'm still listed as a felon. I don't trust a database like this one bit. This is a bad idea.
"As currently structured, Basic Pilot does not detect duplicate active records in its database," John Shandley, the company's senior vice president of human resources, told politicians. "The same Social Security number could be in use at another employer, and potentially multiple employers, across the country."
In a recent statement about the bill, the White House maintained that the proposal will allow for "unprecedented" information sharing among federal and state agencies, and that Homeland Security will be able to receive "information on multiple uses of the same Social Security number by more than one individual."
I see a huge potential problem with this. In order to detect duplicate employment employers will have to report that an employee is working with them and also report when an employee quits or is fired. Imagine moving across the country to a new job only to find that they can't employ you because your previous employer forgot (either genuinely or maliciously) to report that you had stopped working for them, so the system sees you working on the other side of the country and determines that you must be using fraudulent credentials.
Also, what about those people who simply need to maintain two jobs?
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
None of the bogus tickets were felonies, so I would not have been able to get a court-appointed attorney for that--at least that's my understanding. The attorney I did talk to about it wanted $500 to show up but said he couldn't guarantee anything. He also pointed out that the officers were unlikely to admit to writing the bogus tickets even if they were informed that I wasn't the guy they thought I was. By the time I was able to sell my car my only option was to pay them if I wanted to be sure to keep my license--which as you know they suspended anyway.
I think maybe you're right that I should have swallowed my pride and accepted money from my friends when they offered. Several people that I don't even know have offered to give me money since I started the blog, but I keep turning it down because I keep thinking I'll be able to take care of it myself. I'm really going to have to think about it seriously but it's hard because I feel like such a loser. I can't explain why. I know logically that this wasn't my fault. But sometimes I think how I'm a 36 year old man that can't even take care of himself and has practically nothing to show for his life. I already feel like people have done too much for me.
That last paragraph was probably the hardest thing I've had to write so far. I'm going to think about what you said. Thanks.