Biometric ID -- unfortunate...and necessary

Three words: universal biometric ID. Something none of the pollsters have asked voters about, and no serving politician has proposed (Newt Gingrich has proposed it, but he's not running for office).

A universal biometric ID is what it would take to control who's here and who's not. It's what could turn off the illegal work spigot--especially with large employers. It could also turn off the social services spigot, if we wished. It would erect an electronic fence blocking everyone trying to access American opportunities and benefits illegally. It would force many of the 10-20 million people here illegally to self-deport to their home countries.

A border fence would only block new entries, would cost a fortune, and would inspire endless digging and climbing. Numerous evasions have also greeted previous ID card technologies, but today we have ways of linking a stored, electronic identity to you that are far, far harder to fake.

So as a people we face a simple choice: hang onto the level of privacy we now have and reconcile ourselves to a river of humanity flowing over our borders; or sacrifice a measure of that privacy in order to know and control who's here--not just immigrants, but criminals and terrorists too.

Then why is hardly anyone talking about universal biometric ID? isn't what the pollsters are asking about. Even supposed hardliners like Tom Tancredo (R-CO) don't dare bring it up. And IDs for immigrants only accomplish exactly nothing. It's the illegals we need to identify, and only universal ID will do that. Unless you offer legalization to anyone who wants it, along with an ID. But then an ID will be meaningless, since we'll have given up our sovereignty.

Of course politicians fear to propose the only thing that would work because zealots of both the right and left would go berserk.

This is sad, because for most of us it's not much of an increment over how much the government already knows about us. And it's sad because we're being denied this protection by the knee-jerk reactions of those who talk the most yet think the least about politics.

A note on the picture: this is a portable version of Fujitsu's palm vein reader technology, which uses the unique, non-rearrangeable pattern of veins in your palm. It's an example of how biometric ID may well not require a physical card.