Articles by Jim Harper

This morning’s Wall Street Journal opinion page blasts Republicans for passing the REAL ID Act. [subscription required]

Keyed to a recent report showing the costs of compliance at $11 billion, the piece notes that all Americans will have to reapply for their drivers’ licenses and ID cards if states go along with this unfunded federal surveillance mandate. It also addresses whether a national ID protects against terrorism or provides effective immigration control and finds REAL ID wanting on both counts. My book Identity Crisis shows why.

Sooner rather than later, Congress will recognize its error in passing the REAL ID Act. Most likely it will try to kick the can down the road. Look for a quiet attempt to change the deadline for getting a national ID in everyone’s hands.

But that is not the solution. If Congress wants a national ID, it should have hearings, markup and pass legislation, then fund and implement a national ID itself.

Congress didn’t have a single hearing or up-or-down vote on the REAL ID Act. This much exposure would kill a national ID plan, of course.

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The Baltimore Sun opinion page recognizes that the REAL ID Act’s national ID system “will neither weed out terrorists nor make a dent in the flow of illegal immigration – the two problems it was devised to address.” In light of the exorbitant cost and impossibility to implement, its advice is to junk the REAL ID Act.

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The current Cato Unbound, Mexicans in America, is the usual provocative and wide-ranging fare.  There’s no lack of issues – or passion – in the debate about immigration.

One item in the current discussion that piques my interest – indeed, concerns me – is the formative consensus that “internal enforcement” of the immigration laws is a good idea. 

University of Texas at Austin economics professor Stephen Trejo writes:

Given that most illegal immigrants come to the United States to work, why don’t we get serious about workplace enforcement? Retail stores are able to verify in a matter of seconds consumer credit cards used to make purchases. Why couldn’t a similar system be put in place to verify the Social Security numbers of employees before they are hired? . . .  I suspect that we could do much more to control illegal immigration by directing technology and other enforcement resources toward the workplace rather than toward our porous southern border.

Doug Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at the Office of Population Research, Princeton University, has interesting information and ideas for reform to which he would adjoin “a simple employment verification program required of all employers to confirm the right to work.”

It does sound simple – until you step back and realize that the simple idea they’re talking about is giving the federal government the power to approve or disapprove every Americans’ job application.  Does anyone think that this power, once adopted – and the technology put in place to administer it – will be limited to immigration law enforcement?

To do this, all people – not just immigrants, all people – would have to be able to prove their identity to federal standards, likely using some kind of bullet-proof identity document (even more secure than current law requires).  That will soon be in place thanks to the REAL ID Act.  Once we’re all carrying a bullet-proof identity document, do you think that its use will be limited to proof of identity for new employees?

It’s easy to see how facile acceptance of internal immigration law enforcement adds weight to arguments for expanded government control and tracking of all citizens.  There are plenty of reasons to be concerned with internal enforcement, and the national ID almost certainly required to make that possible.  Many of them are discussed in my book, Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.

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