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US Immigration Bill May Bring a National Biometric ID Card

Posted by Soulskill on from the fighting-aliens-with-bits-of-plastic dept.

schwit1 sends this quote from the Wall Street Journal: "Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal US workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. ... A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said. The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor."

3 of 619 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Papers Please! by xaxa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sure, they'll start off requiring it ONLY for workers

    That's not really an "ONLY", is it? The British government started off requiring them only for international (non-EU, IIRC) students and air-side airport workers. (The students is because there are loads of international students registered on fake courses at fake universities.)

    There are some useful arguments here and here.

  2. Just need to have serious fines for employers by originalhack · · Score: 4, Informative

    The ID cards are not the problem. The problem is consequences.

    Today, it is cheaper to staff with undocumented workers and hope they don't get caught. If ALL employers had to verify the ID of all of their employees and contractors or face serious fines and all contractors (including household help) were required to show a verifiable ID and anyone who fails to check or falsifies faced serious penalties, this problem would be hugely reduced overnight.

    The real problem is that the big businesses (agriculture, meat packing, hospitality, commercial real-estate, etc..) want the cheap labor and won't let the problem be solved.

  3. If I had mod points, I would mod that up by Presto+Vivace · · Score: 4, Informative

    anyone who has an opinion about this can contact Senator Schumer and Senator Graham