Worker ID Cards Would Fight Illegals
 

Editorial
State Journal Register - Springfield, IL
October 20, 2004

LET'S BE HONEST: When it comes to illegal immigration, hypocrisy holds sway in America.

Nearly everyone complains about the tide of undocumented workers. However, in many areas many people hire those same workers - as gardeners, house cleaners, nannies, janitors, dishwashers, field hands and, increasingly, as electricians, mechanics, carpenters, plumbers and on through an endless list of skilled and unskilled jobs.

Yet virtually no one admits to hiring even a single one of the estimated 8 million illegal aliens working in this country.

THE REASON for this is that employers in search of cheap labor are more than pleased to rely on forged documents by the millions to mask the illegal work force.

In theory, employers face fines and other sanctions for hiring illegals. In practice, though, the proliferation of bogus work papers lets nearly all employers off the hook. As long as an illegal immigrant worker presents a phony Social Security card or a forged green card - perhaps the most counterfeited documents on the planet - the employer is absolved of legal responsibility for hiring him.

The truth is, America will continue to have ineffective immigration controls, regardless of how many billions we spend on border security, as long as Congress continues to block the creation of a tamper-proof worker ID card.

FOR DECADES, lawmakers of both parties have railed against a national ID card on specious civil liberties grounds. Their real agenda is to shield powerful business interests that profit enormously from the low-cost work of illegal immigrants.

Now, House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, a Republican from California, has introduced a measure that would force employers to stop winking at their undocumented workers and finally get serious about stanching the mounting flow of illegal immigration. Dreier's bill stops short of implementing a full-fledged national identity card - but just barely.

Under Dreier's proposal, the federal government would issue fraud-resistant Social Security cards that would include photos and encrypted magnetic strips. Anyone applying for a job, whether immigrant or native-born, would be required to present the card to his employer, who would confirm his identity and legal status through a new national "employment eligibility database."

A simple swipe of the card would verify the prospective employee's status.

THOSE WHO hired illegal workers after checking the database would be subject to serious penalties - fines of up to $50,000 and up to five years in prison for each illegal worker. Just in case anyone doubts that Dreier means business, his bill calls for adding $100 million to the Department of Homeland Security's budget for the sole purpose of enforcing employer compliance.

To address privacy concerns, Dreier's legislation would restrict the new Social Security card to employment-eligibility information only. All the same, it would remedy the critical weak link in current immigration enforcement - the lack of a reliable worker identity card.

This bill also is known as "the Bonner plan" because it reflects many of the substantive reforms proposed by T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. If Congress is ready, at long last, to get beyond America's hypocrisy on illegal immigration, it will adopt the Dreier-Bonner approach.