"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.
2. Have you ever heard the saying "just because you may be paranoid does not mean they aren't out to get you"?
A question:
If President Hillary Clinton (God forbid) were the one advocating this measure, how would you respond?