When senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Schumer proposed their plan for a plastic ID card aimed at decreasing illegal immigration in the United States, the debate began immediately between anti-immigration organizations and advocacy groups. The senators published an editorial in the Washington Post last Friday clearly stating that they want to reduce the amount of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Other identification methods such as biometric iris scanning, fingerprinting and handprinting would be bootstrapped with the national ID card system. Conservative organizations believe the ID card system is an intrusion on privacy, but support immigration reform.
Meanwhile, immigration advocacy groups, especially those supporting Latino immigrants, have been critical of the movement since the proposal’s earliest stages.
"When Obama said [during the campaign] it’s un-American to tear a mother from her child, we believed him," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, told the Washington Post. "We never imagined that a year later, we’d be denouncing his administration for surpassing the Bush administration on enforcement."
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. believes that the government should address immigration policy and reform without forcing "law-abiding American citizens into a biometric national ID system."
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