E-Verify Plus DREAM Act: No Deal

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Ever since Harry Reid hinted at the possibility of attaching the newly introduced DREAM Act to E-verify legislation, the blogosphere has buzzed with this possibility. And now Lamar Smith is using the DREAM Act as a carrot, hoping we will chew the e-verify bundle of sticks like eager bunnies.

He obviously doesn’t know us very well.

To be honest, this isn’t a new conversation. We’ve been here before. But maybe it is time someone stood up and told both Lamar Smith and the Democrats where to put their lousy ideas.

I’m an e-verified dreamer. The funny thing about e-verify is that if you are undocumented and employed using a different identity as in a borrowed or stolen social security number, e-verify will not detect you. In fact, e-verify fails to work more than 50 percent of the time. 50 percent!

And it even ensnares unsuspecting U.S. citizens. My long-time U.S. citizen uncle was almost fired from his job at FedEx because the E-verify employee eligibility program failed to locate him. In fact, every former legal permanent resident and now naturalized U.S. citizen who forgets to inform the Social Security Administration of his/her change in status may fail e-verify and face the pink slip at work.

E-verify is not about ensuring jobs for every American. It is about extending the reach of the police state into our workplaces and our lives. It is a gateway to a national ID card system. We already have a Gestapo in the form of an unaudited and unaccountable Department of Homeland Security. The last thing the American public needs is a gateway to a bigger police state.

In many ways, e-verify spells doom for immigration reform advocates. Big business is hesitant to jump on board this ship. Civil libertarians will fight vehemently against such a system. And I have major doubts as to whether the immigrant rights movement would ever support such a trade-off.

It’s a ship that is going nowhere, quite like the Titanic of comprehensive immigration reform sank without even giving us a good love story.

And yet, some of our “civil rights leaders” are toying with this idea. Go figure.