Show me your papers

By Lee DeCovnick

All United States citizens may be required to carry a biometric I.D. card!

That's not Orwell's Big Brother speaking. Rather Democrat Chuck Schumer (D- New York), and Republican Lindsay Graham (R- South Carolina) have devised new legislation to mandate that every worker carry a government I.D. card to prove his citizenship. The card must be carried every day and may be checked by employers and any governmental authority upon request.

All U.S. citizens would be required to carry an ID cards according to this plan. It's meant to keep companies from hiring illegal immigrants. No matter where you apply for a job, under the plan, you would have to have a card carrying bio-metric information on a microchip. It's like your fingerprints, or a scan of the veins in your hands.

Even the ACLU is not backing this transparent attempt to force a mandatory national I.D. onto 300 million Americans.

We're talking about fingerprinting every single American worker, and that card, in turn, will probably be used not only to work but also to travel, to vote, perhaps even to own a gun.

Senator Graham, in response to these privacy concerns said, "This program would not expand like that." I wouldn't want to call the Senator a liar, but that is a breathtaking level of naivety for a U.S. senator.

National I.D. cards are nothing new, totalitarian regimes revel in the ability to disallow travel, financial transactions, and food distribution for those who don't have the proper papers. A microchip on the card opens the door for the inclusion of non-medical information such as political or union affiliations, criminal or civil judgments, and with the addition of a GPS chip, all travel activity around town and overseas. The serious misuse of such a powerful database tool by any governmental authority is too chilling to consider. Is there any doubt that once down this country starts down this path, it would be politically impossible to turn back?