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A National ID System:Big Brother's Solution to Illegal Immigration
by John J. Miller and Stephen MooreJohn J. Miller is vice president of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Stephen Moore is director of fiscal policystudies at the Cato Institute.
Executive Summary
 Republicans in the House and Senate are moving quickly forward with Orwellian legislation that wouldcreate a national computerized registration system for all American workers. The new federal computerworker registry, which is intended to reduce illegal immigration, is the crucial first step toward theimplementation of a national identification card system for all 120 million American workers. For the first timeever, employers would have to receive the government's permission to hire a new worker. Sen. DianneFeinstein (D-Calif.) has even urged that the ID cards contain individuals' photographs, fingerprints, and evenretina scans.The computer registry and national ID card, which would confer on the federal government vast new police-state powers, is highly incompatible with the Republican theme of expanding freedom and reducinggovernment. There are other problems with the concept: 1) the identification system could be easilyexpanded to include other purposes beyond deterring illegal immigration, such as implementation of aClinton- style health security card, conducting background checks on individuals, and enforcing affirmativeaction laws and other government regulations; 2) the system would cost the federal government between $3billion and $6 billion per year to administer; and 3) error rates that are commonplace for governmentdatabases would lead to hundreds of thousands of Americans being denied legal access to the workforce.A computer registry would impose large costs on American citizens in terms of both dollars and lost liberties.Yet, as this study shows, the impact on illegal immigration would be minimal.
Introduction
 Illegal immigration has become one of the key political issues of the 1990s, especially in border states suchas California. Because an estimated 4 million illegal aliens are living in the United States today, a growing
 
number of Americans are demanding tough measures from the federal government to deter illegal entry. Inresponse, federal policymakers are now considering the creation of a national identification system--an ill-conceived idea that would grant the government vast new police-state powers, require citizens to surrenderbasic freedoms and privacy rights, and fail to halt illegal immigration.Almost all of the major immigration "reform" measures now being debated would establish some sort offederal worker registry. A computerized database would contain information on every citizen and permanentlegal resident of the United States. Before a business could enter a private contractual arrangement to hire aworker, it essentially would have to ask for the federal government's permission. The employer would try toverify a prospective employee's Social Security number against the newly established national database. If
 
the computer registry failed to recognize the Social Security number as valid, the government would forbidthe employer to hire the worker. The plan would cover all workers, including native-born citizens, andprobably require national identification cards with biometric indicators such as photographs, finger prints,and possibly even retina scans for all 130 million Americans in the labor force.The leaders of virtually every libertarian, conservative, and civil liberties organization in America havedenounced the computer registry as "misguided and dangerous" (see appendix). Nonetheless, the Clintonadministration has endorsed the proposal, as have two key Republicans in Congress. Sen. Alan Simpson(R-Wyo.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), who chair the immigration subcommittees of their respectivechambers, are working on legislation to create a registry. Earlier this year Senator Simpson introduced S.
 
269, which would mandate the creation of a national verification system within eight years. RepresentativeSmith introduced H.R. 1915, which would have a national identification system running in 1999.
 
In the absence of substantial public opposition to those dangerous proposals, Congress could approve andPresident Clinton could sign into law a national identification system as early as this fall. Policymakers,however, should prevent that from happening for several reasons:1. Lack of constitutional authority. Congress lacks any authority to establish a national computer registry, to compel citizens to obtain a national ID card, or to involve itself so intimately in theeveryday business decisions of employers.2. Invasion of privacy. The computer registry is an assault on Americans' basic civil liberties. Onceestablished, the computer registry could be expanded in ways that would increase the size andscope of government. It might, for example, be used to implement a Clinton-style health careplan and security card, ensure employer compliance with affirmative action requirements, trackchild support payments, verify that parents are getting their children vaccinated, and conductbackground checks on people who want to purchase guns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)favors a national ID card that would include such information as photograph, finger print, andretina scan.3. Costs to employers and taxpayers. The Social Security Administration acknowledges that a full-blown national ID system would cost at least $3 billion to $6 billion--about 10 to 20 times morethan the proponents of a worker registry have estimated. The system might also imposecompliance costs of at least several hundred dollars on every employer if it required thepurchase of verification equipment. The costs for many employers would shoot into thethousands of dollars. By injecting government into the equation, an ID system would also causeundue delays in hiring.4. Error rates. Any federal computer registry will be contaminated with large amounts of faulty datathat will render the system unreliable. Even the best government databases have error rates of10, 20, and 30 percent. But if the national computer registry had an error rate of just 1 percent,the federal government would wrongly deny jobs to 650,000 American workers each yearbecause of bureaucratic mistakes in Washington.5. An unworkable solution. Many employers hire illegal aliens, even though they know that they arebreaking the law. There is no reason to believe that they will suddenly start to comply with federallaws regarding national identification. And the vast majority of employers--who do not hire illegalimmigrants--will face yet another regulatory obstacle.In sum, the computer registry will impose large costs on American citizens--in terms of both dollars and lostliberties. American workers will pay a high price for a system that will have at best a negligible effect ondeterring unlawful entries into the United States. In the teria over illegal immigration, some policymakers inWashington have forgotten that America is a free and open society. Some level of illegal immigration is theprice we pay for our freedoms and liberties. Congress may want to trade off Americans' basic rights in orderto combat illegal immigration, but the public should not.
The Failed Legacy of Employer Sanctions
 Most illegal immigrants come to the United States in search of employment, not to go on welfare. For manyyears federal officials have attempted to deter illegal immigration by denying undocumented aliens access tothe U.S. job market. In 1986 Congress passed the "employer sanctions" provision of the Immigration Reformand Control Act. Employer sanctions made it a crime for employers to knowingly hire illegal aliens. UnderIRCA, job applicants must prove either their citizenship or their legal residence by completing an I-9 Formbefore they can begin work. Business owners who fail to comply with the law and knowingly hire illegalimmigrants can face thousands of dollars in fines and, in the severest cases, prison sentences.After a decade of experience with employer sanctions, any objective assessment could only conclude thatthe law has been an unmitigated failure. Employer sanctions have done virtually nothing to halt illegalimmigration. The number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the Mexican border rose steadily from 1989through 1993 (see Figure 1).
[1]
Last year, 10 years after employer sanctions were established, 1 millionillegal immigrants were apprehended. That is not altogether surprising. Before passage of IRCA, a GeneralAccounting Office study reported thatemployer sanctions had been unsuccessful in virtually everydeveloped country that had tried them.
[2]
 
Despite the failure of employer sanctions, much of the hysteria over illegal immigration is not confirmed bythe official statistics on the size of the illegal alien population. The Bureau of the Census estimates that thereare now 4 million illegal aliens living in the United States andthat about 300,000 more settle permanently each year. Four million illegal immigrants is undeniably a largenumber of people, but it is far below the "invading army" of 8 million 10 million aliens regularly reported inthe media and by anti-immigrant lobbyists. Illegal aliens constitute only about 1.5 percent of the 260 millionpeople living in the United States. Surely that number does not require draconian enforcement measuresthat would touch every single American worker andemployer--especially the majority of Americans who donot live in areas with large numbers of illegal aliens.
[3]
In addition to not working, employer sanctions have caused significant harm to many Americans. Virtuallyevery independent study on the impact of IRCA has discovered that employer sanctions have causeddiscrimination against foreign-looking American workers, particularly Asians and Hispanics. In 1990 theGeneral Accounting Office documented a "serious pattern of discrimination" resulting from the employersanctions law.
[4]
The documents of Hispanic job applicants were three times more likely to be challengedthan were those of whites. A report by a New York State task force found similar problems. According to theNew York Times, "The report clearly demonstrates that employers in New York State are adopting practicesthat discriminate against foreign residents, out of fear of penalties under the immigration law."
[5]
Employersanctions give even well-intentioned employers an incentive to discriminate in order to avoid costlyconfrontations with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. As the Wall Street Journal aptly put it,employer sanctions are the first set of laws "since Jim Crow where the government is so closely aligned witha process that produces discrimination."
[6]
When employer sanctions were passed in late 1985, many critics complained that precisely thosediscriminatory effects would occur. Critics also said that employer sanctions would inevitably lead to anational ID card.
[7]
Supporters of the law promised that neither of those things would happen.
The National Computer Registry Proposal
 Instead of rethinking the failed strategy of enforcing immigration law at the workplace by turning employersinto INS cops, many policymakers have called for even more draconian measures. The U.S. Commission onImmigration Reform, chaired by former Texas representative Barbara Jordan, conceded that employersanctions had failed to deter illegal immigration. The commission announced last year that current methodsof worker verification were "too susceptible to fraud, particularly through counterfeiting of documents . . .[and contribute to] discrimination against foreign-looking and foreign-sounding workers." Butthe commissionwent on to endorse "a simpler, more fraud-resistant system for verifying work authorization."
[8]
In fact, what the commission has proposed is anything but simple. Hiring decisions are currently privatecontractual arrangements between employers and job applicants. The employer offers a job, the applicantaccepts, and work can begin almost immediately. Under the commission's proposed plan, employers wouldhave to verify the Social Security numbers of employees by matching them against a national workerregistry maintained by a new federal bureaucracy. The registry would then verify the Social Security numberin question and either permit or forbid every individual decision to hire. In other words, the governmentwould, for the first time in history, require employers to submit all of their hiring decisions for approval to afederal bureaucrat.Most advocates of a computer registry system acknowledge that it could work only in conjunction with anational ID card. Without a national identifier, neither the government nor the employer would have any wayof verifying that the person presenting a Social Security number was the actual holder of that number. Illegalaliens could easily use other people's Social Security cards. Senator Feinstein has even suggested anidentification cardwith "a magnetic strip on which the bearer's unique voice, retina pattern, or fingerprint isdigitally encoded."
[9]
Senator Simpson has consistently argued that for employer sanctions to work effectively, an ID card isnecessary. In the 1990 Immigration Act, he sought an experimental card with a biometric component, suchas a fingerprint, and a Social Security number.
[10]
More recently, in Senate hearings on May 10, 1995,Simpson reaffirmed the necessity of an ID card. "A [worker] verification system must have two functions. Itmust verify that a name corresponds to someone who is authorized to work. And then verifying the identity,
 
that the person claiming the name and the number is not an imposter. The use of a biometric identifier, suchas a fingerprint, is needed if this function is to perform reliably."
[11]
 
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