We must KILL, KILL, KILL immigration reform

National Institutes of Health image

I don't care how you feel about immigration reform, we have to KILL DEAD the currently pending legislation.

Why? Somebody in our bipartisan Googly Senate overlords of DC has foisted this — a massive biometric data-mining ID provision — into the legislation.

Forget the various Internet snooping bills that were sniffing around the edges of Congress last year. This is worse.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

And, you're damned skippy there would be mission creep indeed. As Wired notes itself, it happened with Social Security numbers, which the gummint itself originally said would only be used for Social Security purposes.

So, again, I don't care what you feel about immigration reform — the current bill must be killed.

Not weakened, killed.

We don't need anything like this in the bill.

That said, per Dear Leader's own idea about taxing or fining social media and related sites to get them to cough up more info, if this provision stays in the immigration bill, y ou know Obaam will sign it into law.

That's why this bill, and this portion, must be killed. Not weakned, but killed.

If that means larger immigration reform is dead for 2 years, that's what it means.

Period.

I don't care if it even means emailing Ted Cruz, for fellow Texas denizens. Tell him to kill this thing. That said, I'm sure he's already dead-set against it, so Cornyn's the one to be worked here in Texas.

The next worry is that, if this passed at the federal level, it would trickle down to states.

Let's not forget that a state governed by a wingnut like Rick Perry has a driver's license with digital versions of your thumbprints.

And, you think identity theft is a problem now, dealing with Social Security and such? It would be Kafkaesque indeed with this.

So, it's not just the current bill. If future immigration reform legislation has something even close to this tacked on to it, it's got to be killed.