This is an interesting way of putting it. Actually I think that the danger posed to our free and open society and the American way of life by giving the government the tools to track and trace all of its citizens' identity, preferences, movements, purchases, affiliations and perhaps even medical conditions is a much larger than the threat posed by people who cross the border with the sole purpose of wanting to live a better life.
Indeed there is a terrorist threat posed by illegal aliens, but stopping them from getting jobs will certainly not do anything to solve it. I don't like the idea of illegals, but I like this solution to the problem even less.
If you want to keep them from getting jobs, punish the people who hire them. Putting a few of the factory and restaurant owners behind bars for a long time will solve the problem very quickly. They won't come if everyone is too afraid to hire them.
An ID card won't stop people who don't fear punishment for paying an illegal for a job that doesn't "exist".
"If you want to keep them from getting jobs, punish the people who hire them. Putting a few of the factory and restaurant owners behind bars for a long time will solve the problem very quickly. They won't come if everyone is too afraid to hire them."
What you dont seem to grasp is that in the current situation, documentation fraud is so easy, the employers "rely" on documents that are made at shill fake-ID factories. The employer turns a blind eye. IT IS THE WEAKEST LINK IN OUR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT CHAIN, EVEN MORE IMPORTANT AND MORE BROKEN THAN BORDER ENFORCEMENT.
We need tamper-proof IDs and a database that tracks people against social security numbers to be even able to HOLD EMPLOYERS ACCOUNTABLE... See this:
http://www.fairus.org/ImmigrationIssueCenters/ImmigrationIssueCenters.cfm?ID=2314&c=13
So we have (a) vague unsubstantiated fears of an ID system being abused by 'big brother' versus
(b) a broken system that needs fixing by upgrading IDs and databases *that already exist*, to fix illegal immigration.
I'd go for fixing the real problem and ignoring the unsubstantiated fears.
giving the government the tools to track and trace all of its citizens' identity, preferences, movements, purchases, affiliations and perhaps even medical conditions"
This bill does nothing of the above. It merely makes the CURRENT Social Security card less amenable to being forged,
and improves how that is used for employment verification.
movements, purchases, medical histories??? have nothing to do with this.