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National ID Card Measure Comes Before Congress
``` [Social Security cards make a poor identification system. Given the perverse dynamics of privacy issues, this is actually a good thing. At least, it's better than the likely alternatives.]
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Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 22:15:42 -0400
From: Monty Solomon
Excerpt from ACLU News 05-13-97
National ID Card Measure Comes Before Congress; ACLU Urges Committee to Stop Big Brother
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, May 13, 1997
WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union said today that a bill introduced by Rep. Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida, would turn social security cards into defacto national identification cards.
The House Subcommittee on Immigration is scheduled to hold hearings today on McCollum's H.R. 231, which would require the Social Security Administration to "harden" social security cards to make them "as secure against fraudulent use as a U.S. passport."
"Other than turning the card into an identification document, there is no reason to make the card like a U.S. passport," said ACLU Legislative Counsel Gregory T. Nojeim.
"This bill means that Big Brother is knocking on our nation's door," Nojeim added. "Our only hope is that Congress won't let him in."
A similar proposal was rejected when offered as an amendment to the immigration bill Congress enacted last year. That amendment failed on a vote of 191-221 when the then-Commissioner of Social Security, Shirley S. Chater pointed out that the SSA would have to put photographs on Social Security cards to comply with the amendment. Doing so would effectively turn the Social Security Card into a photo-identification document similar to the U.S. passport, Chater said in a March 19, 1996 letter to Congress.
The ACLU said that once "hardened," there would be no limit to the purposes for which the government and businesses would demand to see the ID card. "The card would be demanded when you apply for a job, seek federal or state benefits, board an airplane, check into a hotel, cash a check, purchase a gun or ammunition, or open a bank account, and it would facilitate governmental monitoring and control of these and dozens of other every-day transactions," Nojeim said.
The proposal is based on the hope that a Social Security Card that identifies the holder could not be used for employment purposes by aliens who do not have work authorization. "The National ID Card will not solve the problem of undocumented workers," Nojeim added.
"The same employers who ignore the law today and illegally hire undocumented workers at substandard wages without checking their immigration status will continue to do so regardless of whether the government imposes a National I.D. Card," he said. "And the same people who produce fraudulent I.D.'s today would produce fraudulent National I.D.'s tomorrow."
"Worse still," Nojeim said, "The National I.D. proposal further entrenches employer sanctions the cause of immigration-related employment discrimination," Nojeim said, referring to a 1990 report by the General Accounting Office that documented a "serious pattern of discrimination" resulting from employer sanctions. ```
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