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US Immigration Bill May Bring a National Biometric ID Card
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."
Fine, congressmen should get the cards first. If they still like the idea after 6 years, let them try and foist it on the rest of us.
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and let in all the illegals than give those fucks in washington not only a national id card but one with biometric data. Worse than the Nazis and Soviets.
Federalism is officially a complete failure.
The day I am forced to get an unconstitutional "biometric ID card" in order not to have my job opportunities, directly subsidized by taxes, government-sponsored monopolies and other expropriated wealth, stolen by an illegal immigrant is the day that it's time to dissolve the federal government and revert it's duties back to states that have some semblance of fiscal responsibility and individual rights.
And I say this of course under the near-universal assumption (by now) that this, along with everything else the US government does, will do absolutely nothing to curb illegal immigration or salvage jobs or benefit Americans and instead will be used simply as another tool of inept government to punish the compliant and reward criminals and cheaters and traitor banks and businesses.
The US is no longer a functional government. It can't regulate borders. It dissolves them and signs them away in supranational treaties. It can't regulate trade or abusive businesses. It supports them and bails them out when they fail. It can't win wars. It can't even define "winning" in terms of the bullshit wars it now engages in. It can't regulate reproduction or resource consumption or immigration or anything that actually affects the long term well-being of it's citizens. All it can do at this point is make token bullshit infringements on the rights of anyone unlucky or stupid enough to get in it's way, accomplishing absolutely nothing save crippling debt increases in the process.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs
Well, that's scary. You could easily form a permanent underclass of never-employable again people with that plan.
There's no point to getting a card unless its more effective than a passport or drivers license or military ID, or my freaking passport would be good enough so we wouldn't need this new thing. It took months to get my passport, including all kinds of hoops to jump thru for notarization and some special kind of birth certificate and other foolishness involving the local postmaster. I assume this new thing will be worse, otherwise we wouldn't need it. Its a safe assumption that in general, any time the govt does anything, its to make it worse for the middle class, and this specific situation seems to fit the mold.
For a upper middle class employed dude like myself, a couple months time and a couple thousand bucks is annoying but no big deal, similar to replacing a leaking roof and fixing the damage. For dirt poor, unemployed, barely HS educated, how-mucha-month, joe six pack, he's screwed. What if J6P needs to hire a lawyer to fix some paperwork, or needs to pay up front to get docs from various agencies to prove his existence?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Typical government reaction to a problem: Making life harder for those who follow the rules, and not really impacting the relatively small percentage of people that are / cause the problem. This is how government always reacts. Couple of examples:
I can't get sudafed at the store without showing ID, signing a register and waiting in line at the pharmacy. Bunch of people still making crystal-meth.
I can't legally own a hand-gun in Chicago, yet 400 people a year get murdered with one.
I, for one, advocate enforcing the laws that already exist...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Not sure why you decided to bring race or color into the argument....no one said what color or race illegal immigrants were in this argument.
It's pretty simple, it's because I've worked in those fields, and I can tell you: there aren't very many white Americans who A) are willing to do so and B) are any good at it. I've seen similar problems in construction, although it is not as pronounced. It makes sense though: in America, anyone with any kind of work ethic will be able to get a college degree or learn some kind of skilled trade (plumber, ag inspector). The only ones left to work in the fields are lazy people or immigrants who don't have similar opportunities in their own countries.
Qxe4
> 1) The government has more force to throw at you than any dissenting group could hope to match. The
> government has pretty much a monopoly of force.
Currently true. Personally, I think that this is exactly the situation that the second amendment tried to avoid. Sadly narrow interpretation has hamstrung it and left us in this sad state.
Of course, I simply pointed out the second amendment as evidence that this state of affairs was not intended and that it is the right of the people to overthrow despots. I never said a revolution HAS to be violent. I would be happy to convene a new constitutional convention.... or 50 (no, I don't particularly want a strong federal union... if anything, maybe something like the EU)
> 3) It is the low road, and pretty much says that you completely given up on the American people, or on
> any chance of fixing the American discourse.
Low? Maybe. Its not so much the people as the bureaucracy that I have essentially 0 faith in. They have shown absolutely no real interest in representing what I see as liberty in any meaningful way. if anything, they approach whats left of liberty as an unfortunate hinderance to their ideas, rather than a core value.
I have 0 faith that they have any intention to do anything but maintain their dominance, and line their own coffers.
> I personally dread the day when people take up guns against their elected government. First because the
> term "elected", by picking up guns your saying that you know better than the voters, which to me, is
> tyrannical
This presumes fair elections. I submit that the system of choosing who ends up on the ballot AND the system of voting itself, constitute systematically unfair elections that highly favor the hegemony of two parties that are willing to collude to break up issues between them as a method of effectively shutting out any voices but their own.
As such, I don't, personally, recognize the legitimacy of said elections. I pay my taxes, of course, because they are the biggest gang in town and I am genuinely afraid of their thugs. That should not be construed as I actually consent to their governance or consider them "my government", any more than I would MS13 if they came into my shop and told me I had to pay for protection from their thugs too.
Personally I advocate the progressive marginalization of the government as an entity, as a new form of revolution. De-legitimization in the eyes of the masses, replacement of their functions by other entities where possible, wholesale subversion of their "laws" when applicable. Just as I would for any other armed gang of thugs.
As an anarchist (of the libertarian socialist variety), I have no desire to force my ideas on anyone but... I certainly don't advocate being a collaborator with thugs. I do however advocate self defense, and being prepared enough so that, should the day come, they need to think twice about clamping down and restricting liberty too much further.
If they simply did not attempt to use their thugs to enforce social engineering, I would happily treat them like any other legitimate organization which might need a force to defend itself but, otherwise respected others.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
t's considerably different. For one thing, merely crossing the border doesn't deny you of or remove any of your property or resources.
Bullshit. Soon as he crosses the border, he's breathing my air, drinking water, eating food, driving on roads, etc. He IS taking up resources simply by being there. A small amount, sure, but put him and his 20 million buddies in the U.S. side by side and suddenly the amount is not quite so small is it? When 20 million people drive over our roads, how much more quickly do they wear out, and who's paying to fix them? And when a van full of Mexicans driving at twice the speed limit (not a single valid drivers' license to be found amongst them) crashes and seriously injures all 23 inside, who gets to pay their $800k worth of surgery and medical charges? You and me of course, because the illegals damn sure aint paying for it.
There are definitely immigrants who steal and/or defraud the government, but those are crimes the justice system can handle. For another, concept of a domicile doesn't scale up to a state level because it's rooted in private ownership. Places accessible to the public are public and in a free country, that means anyone can travel there.
No, it doesn't mean "anyone can travel there." It means that property is owned by the public, i.e. the citizens. The people of the U.S. own this land, and we can come and go as we please. We reserve the right to allow others to visit our land as well provided certain conditions have met. Illegal immigrants are those who did not meet our requirements for immigration yet who snuck in anyway, or overstayed their welcome. I know times are tough in Mexico, but this is OUR fucking land, so go your ass home and make something happen there instead of running away from your problems like a coward.
Governments are neither private individuals, with living rooms to protect, nor corporations. They don't have owners or stockholders to whom they have an obligation to provide profit or gain to. Governments, specifically the US Government, are put in place to ensure the liberty and welfare of all they have jurisdiction over to the best of their ability.
One of the U.S. government's biggest and most important obligations is to PROTECT AND DEFEND this nation's property. Allowing anyone to come and go as they please, using up our nation's resources freely and limitlessly, living outside the law, is NOT acceptable to me or to the vast majority of American citizens who have any common sense.
You know what the difference between Americans back in Revolution days vs now is? It's like the difference between a 16 year old who, after saving up money from summer jobs for years, buys an old project car and fixes it up, vs the 16 year whose millionaire daddy buys him a Ferrari for his birthday. Which one do you think better appreciates what he's got? There are people in other countries who would give anything, risk it all to have what we have here in America. Despite what other governments may think, I can tell you there are a LOT of peoples in the world that look up to us and who want to follow our example.
What do you think they dream about when they imagine America? They think of beautiful homes and people, clean, sparkling cities, fabulous wealth. They don't dream about an L.A. ridden by gang problems (many of them immigrants, legally or not), outrageous health care costs (due in part to illegals), outrageous car insurance costs (due in part to illegals), higher taxes (needed to improve roads and other infrastructure worn by the extra use), etc, I'd imagine.
This nation has a lot of problems. Instead of lamely sitting by while they continue to pile up, it's time for our government to take action to solve some of them. Illegal immigration is a big problem, one that most Americans would be happy to see solved. This new legislation doesn't stand a chance, though, I can guarantee that. It will FAIL, or pass only against stiff opposition. Remember the big stink against the Real ID Act a few years ba