"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."
I've never been fingerprinted, and I don't intend to ever be.
Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. "We've all got Social Security cards," he said. "They're just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That's all I'm saying."
There is some sense to this.
When I was working, we had a lot of foreign employees under the work visa program. Before we could put them on payroll, we had to get them a social security number/card. You cannot legally work without one. (We had to take them to the Social Security Office and show their passport and visa.)
Their spouses and children, who were not legally allowed to work, were also not eligible for a social security number. Instead, we had to get a letter from the Social Security Office that said that they are not eligible for a SS#, and we submitted that to health insurance companies and things like that where they want a SS# to enroll someone in a plan. They had to accept that.
So if this system already exists, to separate the workers from the non-worker visitors, then why do they need to make a new and parallel system? Why not just make it harder to pass your SS card to your friend and let him pretend to be you? How about a photo on it, like with all the other forms of ID? Americans already accept that.
