CRISISBOOM

masslive.com

A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle sits parked in front of a crowd of people peering through the U.S.-Mexico border fence at Border Field State Park in San Diego in 2009. At one time, before the enhanced border fence in the area, the San Diego area held the most popular routes for illegal immigrants heading into the United States. (Photo by Denis Poroy / Associated Press file)

Because others have broken the law, the federal government may soon make you prove that you are not a criminal.

Call it logic, Washington-style.

Legislators in the Senate, working to get a handle on illegal immigration, have been talking about requiring each and every person in the land to have an identification card, implanted with a fingerprint or some other biometric detail, in order to get a job. In other words, we would all be guilty until we could prove our innocence, would all be illegals until we could prove our citizenship.

The problem: undocumented workers. Washington’s solution: give the citizens documents.

This plan, being developed by senators working on an immigration fix, badly misreads the mood of the citizenry. The people – liberals and conservatives alike – do not trust the government to do the right thing. Don’t the nation’s elected officials read the polls? Do they really believe that each and every citizen in the land is going to willingly march on down to City Hall or to the local police station or wherever to get fingerprinted for the worker ID cards? And that they’d do so without complaint?

Senators from both political parties have been getting on board with this plan. The thinking: Since illegal immigrants wouldn’t be able to get a card, and consequently couldn’t get a job, they wouldn’t come here in the first place. Problem solved, plain and simple, right? And in the most un-American way imaginable.

Proponents insist that the card would be used only for employment and would not become some sort of national ID card, required for all manner of things. Right. Sure. The same was said of Social Security numbers.

Maybe lawmakers could also work on changing the Pledge of Allegiance, having it end: “With liberty and justice and a biometric ID card for all.”