Dems Proposal Would Create National ID Card
Massive "Believe" System Aimed at Curbing Immigration
Privacy concerns are taking a back seat to a massive power grab again as top Congressional Democrats are proposing to institute a national ID card under the guise of “immigration reform.”
The proposal (pdf) insists that the government can “end illegal employment” by requiring every worker in the country to carry a biometric ID card including fingerprint data with them at all times. The bill insists that the ID card would “prevent future waves of illegal immigration.”
Called the “Believe” System, the plan would have every employer required to check the validity of the ID card with a digital scanner before they would be allowed to hire anyone. The proposal drew quick condemnations from a number of civil libertarians groups, unsurprisingly.
But Sen. Dick Durbin (D – IL) expressed confidence that Americans would accept the measure, adding “now we live in a world where we take off our shoes at the airport and pull out our identification.” Americans have been cowed by threats of terror into all manner of travel restrictions, but will the specter of illegal immigration work the same wonders for this latest government program?
It is unclear, but it seems the Democratic leadership is willing to bet the answer is yes. Unthinkable not so many years ago, the growing calls for the federal government to do “something,” no matter how unwise, about immigration has made a national ID card proposal politically safe.
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Reed Richards
May 1st, 2010 at 6:40 am
Jason Ditz,
This should not surprise anyone. The Sheeple of this country have accepted all manner of constitutional breaches under numerous presidents. When you send oppression abroad in the form of empire through war, it is only a matter of time before those very same policies are then enforced domestically against the populace. Since the Amerikan Sheeple are all fired up and in a hurry to toss civil liberties in the trash can, they no longer deserve to have them. I say papers, national I.D. whatever restrictions that can be put on these idiots should be used.
Druthers
May 1st, 2010 at 6:44 am
You can be sure it is "safe," otherwise Schumer and Durbin wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
Amir Goy
May 1st, 2010 at 8:33 am
And never mind that the floodgates have been opened for some time in order to serve an even more sinister underlying agenda….
Amir Goy
May 1st, 2010 at 8:33 am
And never mind that the floodgates have been opened for some time in order to serve an even more sinister underlying agenda….
Charles
May 1st, 2010 at 10:10 am
I guess the democrats want to lose big in the fall.
E. A. Costa
May 1st, 2010 at 10:25 am
National ID's, Sealed borders, "Guest Workers", and a currency that expires or loses value incrementally over time?
An American captive audience and variations on the Company Store, amigos.
One highly commends Emir Kusturica's Underground: Once Upon A Time There Was A Country.
Most critics thought it was about Yugoslavia. Nowdays, if one watches closely, it is also about the US.
omop
May 1st, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Will the proposed ID card by Mr. Schumer show if the individual holds "two" different loylaties like say to Israel and the US in addition to whether they are Mexican or not?
By the f*ck&^ way who is in charge of this Republic? The 2% group of special people or the 310 million descendants of immigrants and present legal immigrants.
Mr. Schumer this is the US of A. It is not South Africa neither is it Israel.
omop
May 1st, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Will the proposed ID card by Mr. Schumer show if the individual holds "two" different loylaties like say to Israel and the US in addition to whether they are Mexican or not?
By the f*ck&^ way who is in charge of this Republic? The 2% group of special people or the 310 million descendants of immigrants and present legal immigrants.
Mr. Schumer this is the US of A. It is not South Africa neither is it Israel.
Connestee
May 1st, 2010 at 1:29 pm
The American sheeple will go along with this, watch and see. How the 2% you mention manage to do this lays on the shoulders of the sheeple who have lost the ability to think and reason for themselves. They watch CNN, FOX, and the rest of the FCM and accept as truth what they see and hear from the talking heads the elites send as their messengers. I mean, that person is on TV and has to be a lot smarter than I am.
bogi666
May 1st, 2010 at 4:01 pm
This is just the resurrection of a Bush program and Poindexter's Total Information Awareness System which was "offically" ended but continued unofficially covertly.Nothing new, it just the NWO, One World System, the Beast of the Bible being implemented.
bogi666
May 1st, 2010 at 4:01 pm
This is just the resurrection of a Bush program and Poindexter's Total Information Awareness System which was "offically" ended but continued unofficially covertly.Nothing new, it just the NWO, One World System, the Beast of the Bible being implemented.
bogi666
May 1st, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Americans have been forged into NARCISSISTC, CONSUMERIST, GLUTTON of mindlessness which is the inability or desire to discern even their own thoughts from facts. Americans have taken mindlessness to a new dimension taking the thoughts of others as their own facts. The roots of the mindlessness society is fostered by the pretend christians false doctrine of "I'm not responsible god told me and/or Satan made me do it but i'm not responsible". This doctrine is used by governments, businesses, churches and persons thereby giving it legitimacy. This has resulted in an American mindlessness society reciting the pretend christian doctrine which is readily observed on TV, 24 hrs a day 365/366 a days a year.
MoT
May 1st, 2010 at 4:47 pm
I agree in part but I know plenty of Christians who oppose all of that nonsense. It's not only those who blindly follow a particular faith but even those who worship at the feet of government.or the "new man". They regularly practice their faith "religiously" on the bones of anyone who stands in their way. The 20th century proved that, the 21st is part 2.
MoT
May 1st, 2010 at 4:51 pm
We heard privacy advocates, and "patriots", howl like banshees when TIA was revealed, when the Real ID was being forced upon us all, so one can only hope folks will wake up and shake the pillars of Mordor on the Potomac until these bastards either run for their lives or snap out of their delusions. Only threats from the populace will ever stop them. I, for one, would love to see a Ceaucescu "moment" when our overlords realize the mob won't listen to their lies anymore.
jasonditz
May 1st, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Its still a pretty damning indictment of how far we've fallen and how fast. In the 1990's Know Your Customer was political dynamite. In 2001 it only became law by slipping it quietly into the Patriot Act (The first thing I wrote for Antiwar.com in 2003 was about my own difficulty with Know Your Customer issue, where I walked into a bank with $500, a driver's license and a social security card, tried to open a savings account, and they turned me away with a pamphlet about how 9/11 changed everything).
This isn't even being "snuck" in, they're doing it out in the open and smugly noting that people will take their shoes off at the airport. Its absolutely appalling, but unless some millenialist Christian group gets up in arms about this being the "Mark of the Beast" it seems like it'll be awfully hard for most of Congress to oppose.
jasonditz
May 1st, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Its still a pretty damning indictment of how far we've fallen and how fast. In the 1990's Know Your Customer was political dynamite. In 2001 it only became law by slipping it quietly into the Patriot Act (The first thing I wrote for Antiwar.com in 2003 was about my own difficulty with Know Your Customer issue, where I walked into a bank with $500, a driver's license and a social security card, tried to open a savings account, and they turned me away with a pamphlet about how 9/11 changed everything).
This isn't even being "snuck" in, they're doing it out in the open and smugly noting that people will take their shoes off at the airport. Its absolutely appalling, but unless some millenialist Christian group gets up in arms about this being the "Mark of the Beast" it seems like it'll be awfully hard for most of Congress to oppose.
E. A. Costa
May 1st, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Merely by the way, as is not common knowldege, both "Know Your Customer" and the Patriot act contributed to the banking collapse.
They were not a major cause by a long shot but, like Student Loans, they did have an important effect, in several different ways, including considerably increasing day to day expenses.
The Patriot Act, for example, left banks open to potential prosecution in account openings.
The smaller banks dealt with this buy subscribing to all sorts of "legal protection" services, most of which were vaporware insofar as criminal enterprises were concerned, but which, for stiff fees, gave banks some legal protection from government prosecution.
Another cottage industry produced by mindless burreuacracy , security, and regulation.
omgnag
May 1st, 2010 at 8:17 pm
1984
goedel
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:18 am
As the US becomes widely recognized as a 'third world" country, where citizens and permanent residents have very little to show for their taxes except a boundless military establishment, even the foreign poor will know that it is better to be a legal resident of most countries than an illegal resident of the US. In fact, the number of countries where it is better to be poor and legal than once middle-class and a citizen of the US is growing, too.
The US is a very fine country for someone who is young, physically fit and bright, and would like to become a mercenary or a careerist in our imperial armed forces, now stationed in more than 700 foreign bases around the globe. Survive 20 years and he or she can have a nice pension and the thanks of a grateful imperial government.
As for the federal ID card, we are so far along the way to fascism (rendition, torture, presidential assassination, suspension of habeus corpus, military tribunals, imbedded journalism) that an ID card is only small step. If you are not worried about the unitary executive, you need not bother about an ID card.
bogi666
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Not all Christians aren't duped into mindlessness. Notice that I don't use a C, but c. This is purposeful. I use g for the c and use G for the sincere Christians whom practice mindfulness meaning they aren't duped by the Falwells, Dobsons,Robertsons, Hagee an obvious closet queer which he uses homophobic rants to deflect his secret. These types are able to manipulate their congregations into mindlessness by making them adopt their thoughts as being their own facts. The education system doesn't even teach mindfulness and mindlessness. Madison Ave has made mindlessness into a science which is evidenced by a society of narcissistic, consumerist, gluttons. The politicians observe this and act accordingly to convince the mindlessness fools that thoughts of others are thier own facts.
MoT
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Hagee?! Good grief almighty. I don't know how anyone can stand that bellowing buffoon. Still, someone must be or else he'd be thankfully off in some corner diddling with himself instead of screwing with the rest of us just like his fellow travellers Robertson and so forth. They rub shoulders with the powerful and use just the right words because, as you already noticed, they stay on the air. Should anyone really speak the truth, and get Caesar upset, then they'd find their "licenses" strangely out of order.
Druthers
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:56 pm
In Technicolor
E. A. Costa
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:29 pm
"Blasphemy is the only parrhesia."
EAC
allen2many
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Now, Let's get this right, Giving everone in the USA a National ID card will stop Mexicans from running across the border at night. Hell, I wish I would have thought of that.
Margork
May 11th, 2010 at 11:12 am
If you look at the new information about this thing, you will find out that they are now talking about inserting a chip in all of us. Let's face it, this new world order thing really is the end of us. Sixty-minutes had Diane Sawyer and Andy Rooney saying what a great idea it(the chip) is. Over 300 people already had one implanted. They have not only banking and other personal information, but also a GPS. It is insane. The government doesn't like what you say on a web site, boom your chip is turned-off. Where is freedom then?