Thread: Why we need REAL ID and why illegals oppose it

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/k ... 220757.asp

A REAL Solution
The safe side of the ID debate.

By Mark Krikorian

When Mexican President Vicente Fox visits President Bush's ranch Wednesday, he is sure to complain about his host's support for the REAL ID Act, which effectively bans driver's licenses for illegal aliens. The House appended the measure last week to the supplemental appropriations bill for Iraq operations, guaranteeing a Senate debate on the issue. It's likely that there will be another showdown between the two houses of Congress like the one that took place last fall over the intelligence reform bill.




Originally approved by the House in February by a 100-vote margin (with only eight Republicans opposed), the REAL ID Act (H.R. 41 would, among other things, establish certain minimum standards for states if they want their driver's licenses or non-driver IDs to be accepted for federally mandated purposes, such as boarding a plane or entering a federal facility. The standards include verifying the legal status of the applicant, setting the license of a foreign visitor to expire when his visa expires, verifying documents presented by applicants, and modernizing the technology used in licenses.

Some libertarians have denounced the license requirements as the precursor to a national ID card. The Wall Street Journal helpfully invoked the Gestapo by decrying the bill's "show-us-your-papers" approach. Rep. Ron Paul (R., Tex.), God bless him, called the bill "a Soviet-style internal passport system." And the ACLU said it's "laying the foundation" for a national ID card.

Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of liberty, so extra sensitivity to proposals like the REAL ID Act is all to the good. But after a close look, it should be clear there is no national ID card lurking in this bill; after all, Phyllis Schlafly sure wouldn't support it if there were.

But there's more. It's not just that the bill wouldn't establish a national ID; by making our existing, decentralized identification arrangements more secure, the REAL ID Act is the only thing that can stop a national ID card.

The need for more security in our existing document system was highlighted by the 9/11 Commission: "The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver's licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists." (see Chapter 12, p. 390.)

At least two of the 9/11 hijackers had overstayed their visas, and thus their state-issued IDs should have expired. As legal means of entry become increasingly difficult for terrorists, they will seek to enter illegally (as suggested by persistent intelligence reports), making access to government-issued IDs all the more important. In fact, just last week, the 9/11 Commission's counsel told the Senate Judiciary Committee of al Qaeda operative Nabil Al-Marabh, who sneaked illegally over the Canadian border in mid-2001 and was found to have received five Michigan licenses in 13 months, plus licenses from Massachusetts, Illinois, and Florida.

Nor is this laxity purely a Sept. 10 phenomenon; our state-based identification system remains in serious trouble. The Coalition for a Secure Driver's License cleverly has ranked the states according to the Homeland Security Department's color-coding system, with too many states still in the red, "severe risk" category. Some continuing problems: Over the past six years, Utah has issued 56,498 driver licenses and 37,481 non-driver IDs to people without Social Security numbers — i.e. illegal aliens. In New York State, one Social Security number was used to get 57 driver's licenses. And it came to light just last week that an illegal alien in Florida presented a driver's license so he could go to work — at a nuclear power plant.

After 9/11, calls for a national ID card were widespread; from 9/11 until the end of 2001, there were almost three times as many Nexis hits for "national ID" as there were for all of 2000. As the Washington Post wrote in December 2001, "Almost from the day the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, members of Congress, security experts and high-tech executives have endorsed the idea of some new form of identification system as a critical weapon in the fight against terrorism."

In the wake of another attack the momentum could be politically irresistible, unless the public was satisfied that improvements to our existing system were already under way. And there might well be less resistance among lawmakers anyway, since most Democratic congressmen (and too many Republicans) don't really want the borders to be controlled in the first place; so the development of a federally issued universal ID would be an attractive alternative for politicians wanting to appear responsive to the Islamist threat.

Some of the bill's opponents seem especially out of touch. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, wrote, "It's not hard to imagine these de facto national ID cards turning into a kind of domestic passport that U.S. citizens would be asked to produce for everyday commercial and financial tasks." The Journal's editorial writers must not get out much, because regular people have been producing government-issued photo IDs "for everyday commercial and financial tasks" for a very long time. The choice is not between the minimum standards in the REAL ID Act, on the one hand, and on the other, some libertarian utopia where no one knows your name. The choice we are faced with is a tightening of our current, decentralized system of identification, or the eventual demand by a frightened public for a genuine, centralized national ID system.

This isn't the first time the libertarians have fought improvements in ID security. Congress in 1996 actually passed some minimal standards for licenses, but as the implementation deadline approached two years later, then-Rep. Bob Barr (R., Ga.) led the effort to kill the measure. And the president's initial 2002 border security proposal also had such standards in it, but they were pronounced dead on arrival by then Majority Leader Dick Armey (R., Tex.).

So once again, libertarian ideologues are objective allies of big government, trying to block the limited reforms that are the only way to stave off the more sweeping measures favored by the Left.

As genuine conservatives stand athwart history and yell "stop," we need to offer an alternative. The REAL ID Act is the only alternative to a national ID card.

Center for Immigration Studies.

The Real Id is just more stealing of our civil rights. I do not support it and I guarantee you nobody in the Ron Paul camp supports it. We will fight this tooth and nail. Close the borders...no need to ask US CITIZENS "Papers please...may I see your papers". This is a FREE country..or it's supposed to be.

I'm with jazzloversinc on this. Free country for the illegal envaders! We have laws on the books right now that could end all of this nonsense today. This is just one more way to punish the american citizen. We will see down the line how this stupid ID will not change a thing. This is so stupid. They want to give people the illusion that they are trying to protect us, but they are all the while just harming us instead! Ron Paul 2008!!

That WAS the line they told people when we got our SS#'s....our personal identification number. One only citizens and legal immigrants and residents could have. I hold no greater hope for the real ID.

Originally Posted by jazzloversinc

The Real Id is just more stealing of our civil rights. I do not support it and I guarantee you nobody in the Ron Paul camp supports it. We will fight this tooth and nail. Close the borders...no need to ask US CITIZENS "Papers please...may I see your papers". This is a FREE country..or it's supposed to be.

Anonymity is not a civil right. Cops already have the right to ask for your ID (to see your 'papers').

Just as we need to update our currency to help prevent counterfeiting, we also need to update our ID's to help prevent ID theft and fraud. This is why all illegal alien advocate groups vehemently oppose real ID as it makes it much more difficult for them to engage in identity theft.

Let's keep the 'undocumented' illegals undocumented.

I am with Mark Krikorian there is absolutely no way to tell an American citizen from someone who is a non citizen without a REAL ID equivalent. There are accent free Canadians and there are American citizens from Maine with French accents. The average non Latino American can not tell a Puerto Rican from a Dominican by their accent. There are Mexicans with better English than some Soutwestern Hispanics whose own families have been here since before 1776. There is no way to tell without a REAL ID type solution.

Attrition through enforcement. The LAWS are on the books already! This will not solve the problem, I guarntee.

No way. The Real ID is just a neocon assault on our civil rights. It is the absolute equivalant of the Nazi issued papers. The Real ID will stop a natinal ID card? It *is* a national ID card ! That's the most absurd statement I've heard all day.

Why in the world anybody thinks that the Federal government actually wants to fix immigration is beyond me.

Freedom means being free not to have to identify yourself to the government everytime you enter the Courthouse, a bus, a plane, a train...

These policies are far more restrictive than anything the Middle East ( except Israel) has in place, yet they hate us because we're free?

The REAL ID is fundamentally at odds with the ideas that this country was founded upon. The Constitution is there to govern the government, not the people. I just hope the so-called conservatives don't complain when Hillary or Obama enters office armed with the Patriot Act/Real ID/warrantless wiretapping powers at their fingertips. "I see you haven't been to your mandatory diversity training for the month of February, comrade."

What makes anyone think the government even wants to fight illegal immigration? It is not like legions of senators and congressmen are waiting in the wings for the Real ID so they can finally clean up the country. This program gives further ability for the government to let its opposition face death by slow starvation. The founders understood that government is not benevolent - it is force. It is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. (Washington's farewell address)

Working together, this legislation is going to end up as an American version of Solzhenitsyn's Article 58. Maybe not tomorrow or next year, but one day. I guarantee it.

the REAL ID Act is the only thing that can stop a national ID card

Um, hello! The REAL ID is a national ID. Who do these idiots think they are kidding?