"Dems’ Immigration Proposal Creates National ID Card, ‘Fingerprints Every Worker’"

For fuck's sake:

Civil liberties groups and even some die-hard supporters of the Democratic Party are raising the alarm over the Democrats' proposed immigration overhaul, which would see the creation of a national biometric ID card.

"If the biometric national ID card provision of the draft bill becomes law, every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted and a new federal bureaucracy – one that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars – would have to be created to issue cards," the ACLU said in a statement Thursday, following the release of Senate Democrat's 28-page proposal (PDF) for comprehensive immigration reform.

“Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy – one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA,” said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU Legislative Counsel.

As Ezra Klein notes at the Washington Post, no fewer than 10 pages of the proposal are devoted to the "Believe System," which sets up an ID card for everyone in the work force. "Believe" is an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally-stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. The Social Security Administration would be responsible for running the ID card system.

To be clear, this policy is insane, and fascism pure and simple. What the fuck are they thinking?