The immigration bill under discussion in Congress supports a program called eVerify that is supposed to allow employers to make sure that the people they are hiring are in America legally. That sounds like a great idea, but there are some serious problems with the system. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put out a paper on the problems with eVerify. Although I agree with their premise that the program will have problems, I also believe that some form of the program will be necessary.

We are talking about letting millions of previously illegal immigrants enter the workplace and marketplace in America. We need a way of making sure that those people will be honest, hardworking people simply looking for a better life. We need to know about criminal activity, gang activity, prior legal problems, etc. We will need some sort of system to verify that our new citizens are who they say they are and that they want to be a positive part of America.

However, there are some serious problems with the law. On Thursday, CNN posted a story about how the immigration law as it stands would hurt Americans looking for jobs.

CNN reports:

Buried in the comprehensive immigration reform legislation before the Senate are obscure provisions that impose on Americans expansive national identification systems, tied to electronic verification schemes. Under the guise of “reform,” these trample fundamental rights and freedoms.

Requirements in Senate Bill 744 for mandatory worker IDs and electronic verification remove the right of citizens to take employment and “give” it back as a privilege only when proper proof is presented and the government agrees. Such systems are inimical to a free society and are costly to the economy and treasury.

Any citizen wanting to take a job would face the regulation that his or her digitized high-resolution passport or driver’s license photo be collected and stored centrally in a Department of Homeland Security Citizenship and Immigration Services database.

The pictures in the national database would then need to be matched against the job applicant’s government-issued “enhanced” ID card, using a Homeland Security-mandated facial-recognition “photo tool.” Only when those systems worked perfectly could the new hire take the job.

Again, some system is needed to make sure the person applying for a job is who he (or she) says he (she) is. However, this sounds more than a little intrusive to me.

The article further reports:

In short, S. 744 gets around states’ repeated rejections of national identification systems by lumping E-Verify and Real ID into overly comprehensive national identification (rather than immigration) “reform.” S. 744’s provisions also mandate collection of the details about almost every American, an enumeration task the Constitution authorizes only to the census every 10 years, and then only under a 72-year guarantee of confidentiality.

We need to ask ourselves, “Is a national identification system appropriate in a free society?” Meanwhile, S.744 does secure the border before legalizing millions of people we have allowed to be here illegally–where are our priorities?