Thread: Congress Pushes Obama-backed National Biometric ID for Americans

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Congress Pushes Obama-backed National Biometric ID for Americans

Written by Alex Newman



After largely failing to prod state governments into developing a national identification system known as “REAL ID,” Republican lawmakers in Congress are once again pushing an Obama-backed scheme that would force every American to have a national ID card containing sensitive biometric data. The controversial plan, embedded in an immigration-enforcement bill, has been in the works for years, but has consistently been met with stiff opposition from liberty-minded grassroots organizations and activists. While the plan has failed in previous Congresses thanks to a groundswell of opposition, critics of the measure say that without prompt action, the unconstitutional scheme could soon become a reality.

The legislation, officially dubbed the "Legal Workforce Act" (H.R. 1147), is ostensibly aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from obtaining jobs in the United States. Among the most troubling elements highlighted by critics, though, is that the bill would purport to mandate a national ID card for every American as a condition of working. It would also force every employer in America to purchase and use so-called “E-Verify technology” to check with Washington, D.C., as to whether potential employees have government permission to work. Finally, it would create a massive federal database containing sensitive data on virtually every person in the country — a database that could easily be expanded to include even more information.

While establishment lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seem fond of the measure, critics are sounding the alarm about the bill and its implications for liberty. In an e-mail to supporters urging them to help crush the unconstitutional legislation, for example, former Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), in his capacity as chairman of Campaign for Liberty, warned that the national ID scheme would be a nightmare.

Among other concerns, the two-time GOP presidential contender noted that it would allow federal bureaucrats to include biometric information — potentially including fingerprints, retinal scans, and more — that could and likely would be eventually used as a tracking device. It would also make it illegal for anyone to work in the United States without obtaining the national ID.

“Every time any citizen applies for a job, the government would know — and you can bet its only a matter of time until 'ID scans' will be required to make even routine purchases, as well,” Dr. Paul warned, adding that “statists in both parties have been fighting to ram their radical national ID-database scheme into law” for years. “In fact, this scheme was a key portion of the infamous so-called 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform' bills both parties have tried to ram through.” Now, Paul said, the statists believe they have found a way to impose their national ID: Drop the amnesty provisions and focus on immigration “security.”

According to Dr. Paul, a constitutionalist who served in Congress for more than 20 years, the term “security” is being used as “nothing more than a buzzword meant to trick Americans from all over the country into thinking that Congress is finally going to seal our southern border.” In reality, though, it means something much different. “The 'security' members of both parties in the U.S. House want doesn't target any U.S. border,” Paul added. “Instead, it's meant to create an all-out police state within them.”

Paul also warned that the national database required for the ID regime could easily expand to include information on gun ownership, medical records, political affiliation, and “virtually anything else at the stroke of a President's pen.” In fact, the stakes are so high, he said, that this type of battle is often decisive in “whether a country remains free or continues sliding toward tyranny.” Existing abuses such as lawless NSA spying, IRS harassment, and more offer further evidence that the feds cannot be trusted with such Orwellian tools to track, monitor, and ultimately control Americans.

Despite the dangers, the legislation has already been passed out of the House Judiciary Committee, getting a vote just three days after it was introduced — and the markup took place before the text of the bill was even available online. “The speed with which this bill was rushed through Committee means the House leadership is very serious about passing this bill into law as soon as possible,” warned Paul, urging Americans to fight back immediately to prevent the bill from passing. He also warned about potential “bipartisan compromises” that could be even worse than the original.

The legislation was introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who has a dismal 54 percent in the Freedom Index, a tool provided by this magazine that scores lawmakers' votes based on adherence to the U.S. Constitution they all swore to uphold. The controversial bill already has dozens of co-sponsors in the House, too. It is being publicly touted by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who claimed it would bring the “nation’s employment eligibility system into the 21st century,” as well as chief sponsor Smith.

“The Legal Workforce Act turns off the jobs magnet that attracts so many illegal immigrants to the United States,” Rep. Smith said in a statement promoting the measure, ignoring the fact that amnesty and the porous borders have been crucial in encouraging illegal immigration. “The bill expands the E-Verify system and applies it to all U.S. employers. Equally important, the American people support E-Verify,” Smith argued, citing polls showing that Americans overwhelmingly support stronger laws to stop businesses from hiring illegal immigrants. “This bill is a common-sense approach that will reduce illegal immigration and save jobs for legal workers. It deserves the support of everyone who wants to put the interests of American workers first.”

The bill also has the support of several major lobbying powerhouses — including some, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that are infamous for their support of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. Other organizations backing the bill include immigration enforcement-focused Numbers USA, the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Homebuilders, and several others. However, in the past, similar national-ID schemes have met with major opposition from groups including Downsize DC, the Rutherford Institute, the American Policy Center, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation, Conservative Republican Women, and many more.

In a letter to lawmakers about the same legislation in the 112th Congress (2011-2012), that broad coalition of organizations blasted the bill as an affront to freedom and the Constitution. Among other concerns, they said it “violates individual civil liberties such as the right to work and free speech; mandates a costly job-killing regulatory burden that cripples small business; requires employers to become enforcement agents of the federal government; and encourages identify theft of law-abiding citizens.” The bill should never have even left committee, according to opponents.

“It is anathema to limited government, the right to privacy, free enterprise and prosperity,” the coalition said in the letter to members of Congress. “It violates the philosophy of the Constitution and intent of the Framers by subordinating the liberty of citizens to the administrative convenience of government. And the Founding Fathers would have rebelled against such a staggering Federal intrusion into every workplace in the nation and our personal civil liberties."

As The New American reported as far back as 2010, the same plot to impose a national ID on America has been pushed before by some of the leading Big Government-mongers in Congress. The “bipartisan” amnesty-national ID legislation pushed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and backed by Obama in 2010 eventually failed due to a massive uprising against legalizing illegal immigrants. Back then, though, promoters of the biometric national ID scheme were boasting about their machinations.

“Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here,” wrote Graham and

Schumer in a joint op-ed promoting their legislation. “We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card.” At the time, Obama called the proposal “a promising, bipartisan framework which can and should be the basis for moving forward.”

With the amnesty provision now out of the more recent bill — Obama is using executive decrees funded by the GOP Congress in a bid to provide amnesty anyway — analysts say the national ID plot stands a much greater chance of coming to fruition. In addition to being unconstitutional by virtue of the fact that the Constitution grants no power over identification systems to the federal government, history shows that national ID schemes are dangerous and very often abused by authorities. Considering the U.S. government's track record, Americans can be sure that, if the plot becomes law, the ID regime will be eventually be abused as well.

If solving the illegal immigration crisis is truly the goal, there is a much simpler solution. Rather than foisting an unconstitutional national ID scheme on Americans and building a massive database, Congress could stop funding Obama's amnesty decrees and ensure that the borders are secure. For that to happen, though, Americans who value liberty and the Constitution must get involved.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews...-for-americans

5/31/13

http://www.alipac.us/f9/biometric-da...n-bill-279844/

Republican lawmakers in Congress are once again pushing an Obama-backed scheme that would force every American to have a national ID card containing sensitive biometric data...

Friday, 02 April 2010

Obama & Co. Want National Biometric ID

Written by Alex Newman


A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators is teaming up with the Obama administration to legalize illegal immigrants and require biometric national ID cards for every American worker, prompting a swift and bipartisan backlash across the nation.

The proposal would unconstitutionally force nearly all Americans to obtain the new “tamper proof” Social Security cards while purporting to require that all employers purchase new $800 ID scanners. It would also provide a “path to citizenship” for the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants currently living in America.

Led by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, pro-amnesty and national ID legislators have already started the public relations campaign to build support for the “new and improved” version of “comprehensive immigration reform.” In a column published by the Washington Post entitled “The right way to mend immigration,” the two architects provided a superficial glimpse at their agenda. And though the piece is lacking in details, it reveals a dangerous agenda that Americans must oppose in order to maintain freedom.

“Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here,” wrote Graham and Schumer. “We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card.”

The national ID cards would include a "unique biometric identifier," according to Graham and Schumer. Some of the likely candidates include finger prints, retinal scans, or even the layout of a person’s veins in the top of their hand.

Employers who refuse to "swipe the card" would face "stiff fines" and "prison sentences," the Senators noted. “Our blueprint also creates a rational system for admitting lower-skilled workers,” they added.

President Obama promptly signaled his approval and pledged to “act at the earliest possible opportunity.” The White House released a statement noting that the President would do everything in his power to push the issue, and Obama called the Schumer-Graham proposal “a promising, bipartisan framework which can and should be the basis for moving forward."

After the Democrats recent success in ramming through the wildly unpopular health care “reform,” analysts suggested the “momentum” from that victory could help Obama and the Democrats in their efforts to pass a variety of legislation - including immigration “reform.” And despite broad opposition by a majority of Americans, the agenda marches forward.

But the proposals are already meeting fierce resistance from legislators, citizens and non-profit groups. “This so-called comprehensive immigration reform really means amnesty for the 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants in America today,” explained Republican Representative Brian Bilbray of California, the chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. “What part of the word 'illegal' doesn't the president understand?”

Congressman Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty sent out an e-mail to supporters vowing to battle the proposal as well, warning that it was a “statist’s dream” and that the immigration issue was being used as “cover” for an even bigger agenda.

“Instead of controlling the border and enforcing the rule of law, these statists want to control you,” explained the group’s president, John Tate. “Allowing our government to have this much ‘prying power’ in our lives will ultimately result in the TOTAL loss of freedom.”

Tate noted in the letter that this sort battle often determines whether a country will remain free or descend into tyranny. “You see, once ‘well-meaning’ government bureaucrats know exactly how we live our lives, it won’t be long until they try to run them,” added Tate. “In fact, it will only be a matter of time until they spend their workdays making sure you and I don’t go anywhere we ‘shouldn’t,’ buy anything we ‘shouldn’t,’ read anything we ‘shouldn’t,’ eat anything we ‘shouldn’t’ or smoke anything we ‘shouldn’t.’”

In the media, commentators have also blasted the proposal. “Graham's [Republican In Name Only] tactics will enable the President to turn illegal aliens into documented Democrats. And in the process, hand the Federal Government yet another way to monitor and control our lives,” explained Roger Hedgecock in a piece for Human Events. “Opposition to this tyranny will come from all parts of our divided political spectrum,” he predicted.

And indeed, even the liberal American Civil Liberties Union is gearing up to fight the “bipartisan” effort. “It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, the ACLU’s legislative counsel. “We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”

These amnesty and biometric national ID proposals are dangerous for a lot of reasons. And this battle is a crucial one. The Social Security cards will quickly go from being required to work — which is bad enough itself — to being needed for everything imaginable, from health care to everyday purchases. But the problem is not a lack of biometric ID cards for the serfs; it is the wide open Southern border and the unconstitutional incentives encouraging illegal immigration.

Legalizing the tens of millions of illegal immigrants will harm America on several fronts. Not only does it send a loud message that the rule of law means nothing (except if it furthers statist aims), it will also fundamentally alter the voting dynamics of America. The true solution to the illegal immigration crisis is to stop providing perks like welfare to law breakers, and to properly police the border and defend the states from invasion.

Citizens must unite to defeat this effort. If Obama and his allies like Senator Graham manage to force this monstrosity on the American people, the last remaining semblances of freedom will be in critical danger. Americans already said no to amnesty under former President George W. Bush. Why would adding an unconstitutional national ID scheme with biometric data make it any more desirable? This is not the “change” people voted for, and it must be opposed.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews...l-biometric-id

http://www.campaignforliberty.org/ro...-workforce-act

Ron Paul Testimony on The Legal Workforce Act

POSTED BY Megan Stiles February 04, 2015

Please see Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul's statement before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security of the Committee of the Judiciary. Dr. Paul specifically addresses the problems of implementing a mandatory E-Verify system.

Statement of the Honorable Ron Paul

Before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security of the Committee of the Judiciary Hearing on

The Legal Workforce Act

February 4, 2015

Chairman Gowdy, Ranking Member Lofgren, and the rest of the members of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony. On behalf of Campaign for Liberty’s nearly three quarters of a million members, I am pleased to explain why, by creating a mandatory E-Verify system, the “Legal Workforce Act” threatens individual liberty and limited, constitutional government.

The mandatory E-Verify system proposed in the bill requires almost all Americans to provide their prospective employers with their Social Security number, as well another form of identification, so the employer can verify that the applicant is a legal U.S. citizen. The second piece of identification must contain the individual's photograph and could include biometric identification information and potentially anything else the Secretary of Homeland Security decides needs to be on it. Americans could not legally obtain full-time work in the United States until their prospective employer received permission from the federal government to hire him or her.

The mandatory E-Verify system would have to require the federal government to store the collected information in a federally run database. While language in the bill says that it does not authorize creating a “National ID card,” giving individuals a choice of identifying documents to use in complying with the E-Verify mandate does not make these systems any less threatening to liberty. This is especially true with documents containing “biometric” information.

Border security is certainly a legitimate constitutional function of the federal government. However, immigration enforcement must be conducted in a manner that respects the government’s constitutional limitations and does not violate individual liberties. Mandatory E-Verify fails on both counts. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government granted the authority to force Americans to seek permission from the federal government in order to obtain employment. More importantly, as I will detail below, a mandatory E-Verify system poses a danger to individual liberty.

Even if the fears of civil libertarians are unfounded, mandatory E-Verify will still place burdens on Americans because of the errors that will inevitably plague the system. Anyone who thinks the government is capable of operating a complex database system without error should recall what a wonderful job the federal government did creating and administering Healthcare.gov.

The inevitable mistakes in the E-Verify database will cause many Americans to be denied or lose job opportunities because the E-Verify system falsely labeled them as "ineligible" to work in America. In the best case scenario, these Americans will eventually be able to gain employment, after spending time and money challenging government computer inaccuracies, and will receive compensation from the government. In the worst case scenario, they will find themselves unemployable, having been labeled the equivalent of what George Orwell in 1984 called an “unperson.” Mandatory E-Verify will also impose additional compliance costs on American businesses at a time when they are struggling with ObamaCare and other regulations.

The mandatory E-Verify system is also an identity thief’s dream. Imagine being able to access the names, Social Security number, pictures, and biometric information of millions of Americans simply by hacking one government database. In recent years, there have been several cases of government databases being hacked by identity thieves, so it seems highly unlikely that the government will be able to protect the information stored in the mandatory E-Verify database from identity thieves.

Supporters of E-Verify claim that mandatory E-Verify will not threaten our liberty or our privacy because the system will only be used to confirm citizenship. However, not only does there not appear to be anything in the bill limiting the uses of the E-Verify database, but the Legal Workforce Act itself actually opens the door to use E-Verify for purposes unrelated to work verification by allowing the use of E-Verify to protect “critical infrastructure.”

There is no way this Congress can guarantee that a future Congress will not expand the uses of the mandatory E-Verify system. Remember, when the Social Security system was created, Americans were promised the card would only be used to help administer the Social Security program. Yet today, this Committee is considering making the Social Security number the very foundation of a massive new identification system.

Is it really so inconceivable that if this Congress passes mandatory E-Verify legislation, the day may come when Americans will not be not be able to board an airplane or exercise their Second Amendment rights until the E-Verify database has confirmed they have federal permission to do so? There is also nothing stopping a future Congress from linking the E-Verify system to other databases containing Americans’ health care, education, and other personal information.

The history of government officials using personal information to harass and punish citizens who oppose current government policies provides another reason to oppose mandatory E-Verify. An obvious example of the threat of giving government officials access to citizens’ personal information is the history of the USSR and other communist countries. However, one does not have to look overseas for examples of how politicians have used, or abused, information collected by government to harass their enemies or consolidate their power. Think of how unscrupulous politicians in both parties have used IRS information to harass and intimidate their political opponents. Or, imagine what uses a future Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, or Lois Lerner could make of the E-Verify database.

Mr. Chairman, mandatory E-Verify violates the Constitution. More importantly, requiring every American “show their papers” in order to obtain federal permission to hold a job is incompatible with a free society. Mandatory E-Verify will also deprive Americans of job opportunities through false positives while providing politicians and others with opportunities to use the information in the database to harass their political and other enemies. Furthermore, there is no way a future Congress can be restrained from increasing the uses of the E-Verify system or syncing it to other databases to complete a massive, universal data system that could seal the transformation of America into a total surveillance state.

For these reasons, I urge the committee to reject the “Legal Workforce Act” or other legislation containing mandatory E-Verify.

Typical of the congresses make up with Democrats and republicans. they just a few years ago passed, at the behest of Pres. Geo. Bush, the Patriot Act limiting American's civil rights. Now they seem to think that they must protect aliens civil rights, which in turn makes it even harder for Americans to compete in their own nation. Are we, Americans weary at all of that crap yet? I do not think so, Americans interested in Constitutional rights would have stormed Washington when the Patriot Act became law!! Americans would have stormed Washington defending the Constitution when the Dem. Tyranny Imposer (Obama) showed his true self which is a prescribed Constitutional duty of and for Americans to perform! That lack of performance to defend the Constitution only emboldens those in Washington to further destroy the Constitution! It will not end until we end it per the Constitution's directives!

If it was not actually happening to us it would make a wonderful, laughable cartoon strip!

I support an E-Verify system for employers, that simply verifies social security number and a photo ID like a driver's license. That's all we need. We do not need a REAL ID, or a Biometric ID, or any national ID of any kind. If the legislation opens that door, then I must regretfully oppose it. We need to be sure that it actually does this, and based on Ron Paul's testimony, it does not do this, but opens the door such that future Congresses could do it. This is an important difference from what Alex Newman is writing. Any future Congress can do anything, that's the case regardless of whether E-Verify passes now or not, so we need to investigate this further and be sure at least that this specific legislation does not open the door for DHS to require a national ID without additional legislation from Congress, and it appears that it does not.

visatalad, do you have thoughts or information on this? Thanks.