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Congress considers national ID
Critics warn of privacy concerns

Kathy Kiely
USA TODAY
March 2, 2006

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WASHINGTON - Congress is headed toward approving a plan that would require employers to check Social Security numbers or immigration documents with a government database before they hire workers.
Critics see it as the beginning of an information stockpile that could be used to track U.S. residents.

"We're getting closer and closer to a national ID card," says Tim Sparapani of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lawmakers such as conservative House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., have signed on to the verification plan, which is included in some form in every immigration bill currently before Congress. The goal is to determine whether job applicants can legally work in the United States.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which handles immigration, begins drafting its version of the bill today. The House bill passed in December.

The bills would require that a pilot program currently used by 5,000 employers to check the legal status of job applicants be made mandatory. President Bush's 2007 budget includes $135 million to begin expanding the verification system nationwide.

Proponents say new tools are needed to curb illegal immigration. There are now an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. "If we're going to have any means of controlling our borders, you have to have a tamperproof Social Security card and verification at the time of employment," says Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif.

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., says "this is not a national ID system." But several bills authorize studies of "tamperproof" Social Security cards or their issuance. The cards would include some biometric data and would be harder to counterfeit.

During a debate in 1984, former representative Don Edwards, D-Calif., compared a proposed enhanced Social Security card to an "internal passport." Twelve years later, conservative GOP lobbyist Grover Norquist flooded Capitol Hill with activists wearing washable tattoos of an inventory bar code to show how a federal information clearinghouse could become a way to "track" Americans.