American Civil Liberties Union

One of the things in play in the current wrangling over immigration reform is whether we will see the E-Verify work authorization program expanded nationwide and made mandatory. We’ve just put out a white paper summarizing “The 10 big Problems With E-Verify.”

Overall, E-Verify represents a move toward the creation of a “Mother may I” or “permission society” in the United States. In an attempt to stop the tiny percentage of those starting jobs in the United States each year who are unauthorized workers, E-Verify would force everyone to obtain affirmative permission from government bureaucracies before engaging in the core life functions of working and earning a living. That not only inverts the relationship between the individual and government, but will lead to a number of other serious problems, which we set forth in the paper.

The ACLU of San Diego filed a lawsuit today against the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) for violating the constitutional rights of two photographers, and for maintaining an official policy prohibiting the use of cameras and video recorders at or near U.S. crossing points, which violates the Constitution.

Leading yesterday’s New York Times op-ed page is a column by Bill Keller, Show Me Your Papers. It supports the faulty claim that we can solve our nation’s immigration woes if we just create a national ID system, and it specifically lauds a 2010 proposal by Sens. Schumer and Graham to create a biometric social security card that would function as a national ID for every American.