[Originally published at Corrente.]
The Immigration Bill is a real piece of work, entirely worthy of the malAdministration. I know Broderella says Teh Bipartisan is awsum, but:
The American Civil Liberties Union today expressed grave concerns about the due process and privacy implications of the Senate immigration bill.
The proposed legislation would create a vast federal database to verify the work eligibility of all job applicants in America - including U.S. citizens; expand indefinite detention; and deny effective judicial review of Department of Homeland Security errors denying immigration status.
"The bill denies essential due process, seeks to overturn Supreme Court limits on detention and fails to guarantee meaningful judicial review," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. "Substantial changes must be made to ensure that the legislation adheres to the values of our country and our Constitution. Without effective judicial oversight, any new program enacted by Congress can be gutted by an overburdened, incompetent or hostile bureaucracy."
The proposed legislation would require every job applicant in America to have their eligibility to work verified by the DHS, using the error-plagued Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS). EEVS creates a massive government database containing extraordinary amounts of personal information on everyone in America, tied to each individual’s Social Security number. If DHS makes a mistake in determining work eligibility, there will be virtually no way to challenge the error or recover lost wages due to the bill’s prohibitions on judicial review.
And, oh yeah, there'll be a national identity card:
As a part of EEVS, every person in America would be forced to carry a hardened Social Security card perhaps containing biometric information about the cardholder - essentially a national ID - and present a Real ID-compliant driver’s license to get any new job.
What next? Wearing our underwear on the outside?
Kennedy got deked on this one, just like with NCLB.
NOTE Oh, and look. I'm absolutely certain that DHS would never crosslink the EEVS employment database with any of the various NSA databases for the warrantless surveillance programs that we know about, and the ones we don't know about. Because that would be wrong. Even if the President told them to do it.