Last week President Obama met with key senators proposing a comprehensive immigration reform bill. This bill included an outrageous mandate for a national biometric ID card for every American who intends to stay employed in the U.S. Â Members of congress are pushing this on the auspices of immigration reform and terrorism prevention.
Last week members of Congress also solidified commitments toward the comprehensive repeal of the Real ID Act, which would end no-bid contracts for biometrics in national ID cards. The Real ID Act, had it not been widely rejected by half the nation, would have required all Americans to possess a biometric ID card to bank, to enter federal buildings, to work and to travel in the United States.
The Graham-Schumer move in congress proves there is an agenda to undo the losses to biometric card contractors, from the nullification and repeal of the Real ID Act.
Actions of concerned citizens everywhere are needed to oppose the succession of contracts designed to survey identity. Please act now to reject the agenda to save corporate welfare contracts mandating the surveillance of your bodily attributes.
The following is a letter packed with recent news of States and citizens suffering due to the current national ID mandates.
Can you prove you're not a terrorist? By Jim Babka
The REAL ID Act has punished innocent Americans with red tape, higher fees, and lost privacy. Some in Congress want to add to these burdens.
Let's stop them! Please tell Congress to repeal REAL ID and oppose any further attempts at creating a national ID card.
You may borrow from or copy this letter . . .
What is the purpose of REAL ID?
* to prevent terrorists from boarding planes, even though there are an infinite number of other ways to engage in terrorism
* to prevent illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses - which only increases the likelihood they will drive without ever being tested, creating more dangerous roads http://tinyurl.com/yf5r595
Why should either (misguided) goal interfere with an American citizen's attempt to renew a driver's license? REAL ID is working exactly as I thought it would. It punishes innocent Americans like me with red tape and higher fees by forcing us to "prove" we're not terrorists or illegal immigrants.
In Florida . . .
* the driver's license fee jumped from $25 to $48
* a woman was denied a license for failing to produce certified documentation of her first marriage, held in 1958 in Minnesota http://tinyurl.com/ykb4kud
* and a 68 year-old man's Rhode Island birth certificate that had been used to get into the Air Force, and to get a Florida license 20 years earlier, was rejected http://tinyurl.com/ylzyhct
Nevada has also been plagued by long lines with applicants turned away. http://tinyurl.com/yzgfex3
Meanwhile, two New York DMV workers were recently arrested for selling "authentic" ID's to criminals. http://tinyurl.com/yh7r7zm
This hardly inspires confidence that a nationalized ID system will stop terrorists and criminals from getting driver's licenses! And yet the Administration and Congress are considering a replacement to REAL ID, the PASS ID Act, which will make it even easier for corrupt state employees to get access to my identity documents!
http://www.realnightmare.org/about/114/
OPPOSING THE SCHUMER-GRAHAM IMMIGRATION REFORM AGENDA
In addition, Sens. Lindsay Graham and Chuck Schumer want to force all American workers to carry a biometric ID card. http://tinyurl.com/yd83dwt
In other words, to hold down a job, I would have to be fingerprinted, enrolled in a national database, and possibly tracked. I have had it! This is America!
Americans shouldn't have to prove we're not terrorists, or that we're not illegal immigrants. I have the right to travel. I have the right to earn a living. I resent and reject any government program that presumes I must ask for permission. I demand that you repeal the REAL ID Act and do everything in your power to oppose the PASS Act, the Graham-Schumer card, and all forms of national ID.
{END LETTER}Please use Op-Ed News to send a letter to your State's congressional leaders and to the local and national press about this direct move to further establish the U.S. surveillance industrial complex by the unelected hands of pentagon contractors.
For more news and information about international data & identity surveillance policy and technology [United States, UK, parts of Europe, India, China, Australia, Canada and Mexico] please visit BeatTheChip.org .
