One More Card in the Wallet

What does a national identification card have to do with comprehensive immigration reform? Quite a bit. As we've said for many years, the issuance of ID cards to all U.S. workers is one of the keys to effective and long-lasting reform of a broken system.

As an enforcement tool, a little plastic card could be more valuable than walls and fences, Border Patrol agents, worksite raids and wrongheaded efforts to deputize local police to act as surrogates for the Border Patrol. That's because the best way to discourage illegal immigration is to focus on the employers who hire illegal immigrants. And the best and fairest way to do that is to provide employers with a reliable mechanism to know who is eligible to work and who isn't. That's where a national ID card comes in.

Kudos to Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for figuring that out. The senators are making a tamper-resistant, biometric, national ID card an integral part of their about-to-be-launched legislative effort to reform the immigration system. Under the new immigration bill, which is still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers — both citizens and immigrants — would be given an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to link the card to the worker. Anyone who applied for a job would have to produce the card. Then, employers couldn't very well claim they had no idea that the people they were hiring were illegal immigrants.

There is sure to be more in the mix.

In a speech last summer, Schumer laid out seven principles that would guide reform legislation. One of them was creating a biometric employee verification system, i.e. a national ID card. Schumer's other goals included: curtailing illegal immigration, achieving control of our borders, forcing illegal immigrants to register and undergo a rigorous legalization process or face deportation, preserving family reunification as a cornerstone value, creating a system that makes it easier for immigrants to come legally, and encouraging the best and brightest to migrate to the United States.

But it's the national ID card that could turn out to be one of the most controversial aspects of the Schumer-Graham immigration bill, along with legalization. Civil libertarians on the left don't like the idea because it sounds like big brother. Protesters on the right won't like it because they'll see it as more evidence of big government encroaching on private enterprise. Both sides are wrong, and opposing this concept would be a big mistake.

Illegal immigration wasn't imposed on this country by some mysterious external force. Americans helped create the problem by hiring illegal immigrants or turning a blind eye to those who did. So they need to do their part to help rectify the situation. And if that means doing something as harmless as carrying around another plastic card in our wallets, so be it.

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