Loss of Privacy

Earlier this week, Presidental hopeful, Mitt Romney, spoke at a town hall meeting in Iowa that he supports an expansion of the controversial E-Verify program for employment. Currently, the program checks the legal status of new employees, but Romney would push it further.

Mitt Romney backed a national ID system and government pre-approval of all new hires in the country. It’s a stunning amount of power he wants the federal government to have.

You’ve got to crack down on employers that hire people that are illegal, and that means you have to have a system that identifies who’s here legally, with a biometric card that has: this is the person, they’re allowed to work here. You say to an employer, you look at that card, you swipe it in your computer, you type in the number, it instantly tells you whether they’re legal or not.

The E-Verify system is a biometric identification system that is a direct response from Congress as a part of immigration reform. Despite the fact that the government continually tells us that an E-Verify or national ID system would solve our illegal immigration problem, it will never work.

A mandatory national EEV system would have substantial costs yet still fail to prevent illegal immigration. It would deny a sizable percentage of law-abiding American citizens the ability to work legally. Deemed ineligible by a database, millions each year would go pleading to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration for the right to work. By increasing the value of committing identity fraud, EEV would cause that crime’s rates to rise.

Creating an accurate EEV system would require a national identification (ID) system, costing about $20 billion to create and hundreds of millions more per year to operate. Even if it were free, the country should reject a national ID system. It would cause law-abiding American citizens to lose more of their privacy as government records about them grew and were converted to untold new purposes. “Mission creep” all but guarantees that the federal government would use an EEV system to extend federal regulatory control over Americans’ lives even further.

The E-Verify system is inaccurate fifty-percent [pdf] of the time costing employees thousands of dollars in rectifying the situation. If implemented nationwide, it would cost small business owners billions in additional taxes.

Our immigration system is broken, but this is not the way to fix it. Immigrants, illegal or legal, play an extremely important part in American society. Removing them with a system that only works half the time not only hurts the immigrants and citizens caught up in the system, but every American who relies on the goods and services that they provide.

From C-Span:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing focusing on U.S. immigration policy.

There were several stories this week about traveling, the TSA, and the ever-increasing security theater employed at the nation’s airports.

A man went through Las Vegas airport and the explosive residue on his clothing was never detected.

A man was questioned by immigration and the TSA about the meaning of his t-shirt.

Maybe they took the t-shirt literally?

Reading books is now some sort of danger as well. United Airlines passenger, Vance Gilbert, was reading a book about old airplanes. The flight crew freaked out and the plane was returned to the gate.

The plane went all the way out to the take-off point, in the queue for take-off. All the while I noticed a lot of phone pinging back and forth between the flight attendants. The young woman flight attendant was also crouched next to and conversing seriously to a dead-heading pilot about 4 seats up on the other side. The plane then proceeded to turn around and head all the way back to the gate. Once at the gate, the jet bridge was positioned. The Captain announced, “We have a minor issue, and we will continue our departure once it’s resolved.” He left the aircraft.

After about 5-10 minutes, 2 Mass State Policemen, 1 or 2 TSA Agents… come down the aisle and motion me to get off of the plane. I do not remember if they called me by name.

The police questioned Mr. Gilbert and quickly determined that the flight attendants were idiots. Mr. Gilbert was allowed to return to the plane, though his journey was not so smooth.

We were now at least, after re-queuing, over an hour late. No one looked me in the eye, flight attendants, passengers. I missed my next connection, and had to cancel that portion of the flight… rent a car ($270) plus fuel ($30) to my work (lost 1/2 wages = $100), and I was afraid to read for the next two flights…

What’s my take-away from this experience as a taxpayer, United Airlines patron, Black Man, teacher, mentor, American? I was brokenhearted and speechless as I overheard my friend’s wife try to explain to her kids what happened and what he and I were talking about over dinner. They never did get why.

Any rational person doesn’t get why either. There was absolutely no reason to ever question Mr. Gilbert. While not everyone is a plane enthusiast, it’s not that difficult to walk up to him, ask if you can have a look at his book, ask him about his book, or any other manner of engaging in conversation and one would see that Mr. Gilbert and his book on WWI planes was not a threat.

Also, terrorists don’t research how to destroy planes on an actual plane. They learn that information beforehand and typically don’t “wing it” as they go.

Even though Jose wasn’t born in America, he’s just as American as I am. It’s time we started taking immigration seriously and helping these folks out. You can help by writing to Congress and letting them know you support the DREAM Act.

Canada is set to start rolling out biometric identification for immigrants seeking visas. Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office has stated that a final decision as to what countries will be subjected to the biometrics will be made later this year or early 2012.