The bill, which is titled the Securing America's Future Act of 2018, was introduced by Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA).
According to the new legislation, a new mandatory national identification system would be imposed that would require citizens to carry a government-approved ID containing “biometric features.”
Can anyone say, "Papers please?"?
This bill amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to revise immigrant visa allocation provisions, including family-related visas. A nonimmigrant classification for parents of adult U.S. citizens is created.
The diversity visa program is eliminated.
Annual immigration levels are revised.
The limit on the worldwide level of employment-based immigrants is increased.
The H-2C visa temporary agricultural worker program is revised. A trust fund is established to provide incentives for such workers to return to their country of origin.
DNA testing to establish family relationships is authorized.
Employment eligibility verification provisions are revised. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shall establish an employment verification system.
No federal, state, or local government entity or individual may prohibit or restrict a federal, state, or local government entity or official from complying with the immigration laws or assisting related federal law enforcement activities.
The bill revises provisions regarding: (1) detention of aliens in removal proceedings; (2) illegal entry and reentry; (3) inadmissibility and deportability of criminal aliens, gang members, drunk drivers, and sex offenders; (4) repatriation; (5) asylum and asylum fraud; (6) unaccompanied alien children; (7) foreign students; and (8) visa fraud.
The bill: (1) transfers authority for strengthening the southern border from the Department of Justice to DHS; (2) revises border security provisions; (3) provides for additional border security personnel; (4) authorizes new ports of entry along the northern border and southern borders; (5) authorizes National Guard border security activities; (6) provides contingent nonimmigrant status for certain aliens who entered the United States as minors; (7) authorizes appropriations for specified border barriers and infrastructure; and (8) establishes Operation Stonegarden to make border security grants to law enforcement agencies.
DHS shall: (1) submit a southern border threat analysis, (2) establish the Integrated Border Enforcement Team program, (3) implement the Border Security Deployment Program, (4) review social media activities of visa applicants, and (5) establish a biometric exit data system.
In other words, anyone in the US must have a national ID card, one approved by Homeland Security in their new system.
You may say, "Well, OK, I already have a driver's license and I have to have that and a Social Security card (which our predecessors were told would never be used as an ID card), so what's the big deal?"
The big deal is that the Social Security card was intrusive enough and has caused countless thousands of Americans tremendous problems with identity theft. As for a driver's license, it is issued by each state, not the central government. Now, they are wanting biometrics, as well.
Additionally, former Texas congressman Ron Paul, who has been warning against E-Verify for years, has taken a step to start an online petition against the portion of the legislation.
"This is exactly the kind of fight that can decide whether a republic descends into tyranny," he wrote. "This new National ID scheme filled with biometric information, linked to a federal database would be required for every American to work – and could include all sorts of other information like gun ownership, religious beliefs, and political involvement."
Dr. Paul also reached out to his supporters and informed them that the national ID cards “could expand to include American citizens’ gun ownership status, religious beliefs, political affiliation and virtually anything else at the stroke of a President’s pen.”
“Now, using the momentum behind Trump’s tough talk on immigration and border security, I’m afraid the statists believe the best way to finally enact their National ID scheme is by promoting their bill on Capitol Hill as a ‘DACA fix’ while they sell it to the GOP base as a border ‘security’ measure,” Paul added.
Instead of ensuring a secure border by actually securing them, Paul writes the national ID will be used “to create an all-out police state within them.”
Readers are familiar with the IRS targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
But there has been another targeting story percolating through the court system that has received little attention, until now.
The IRS also targeted groups related to Israel. The facts came to light in a litigation brought by Z Street, which waited 6 years for approval.
The founder of Z Street, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, explained the significance of Z Streets lawsuit against the IRS, and how it related to the IRS failure to preserve documents about Tea Party targeting, in this 2014 interview:
Marcus told the story in an Op-Ed yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, The IRS Campaign Against Israel—and Us:
The first IRS viewpoint discrimination case to be filed, Z Street v. IRS, has been settled, with disturbing revelations about how the Internal Revenue Service treated pro-Israel organizations applying for tax-exempt status.
I founded Z Street in 2009 to educate Americans about the Middle East and Israel’s defense against terror. We applied for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code in December 2009—a process that usually takes three to six months.
Instead, the application languished. In late July 2010, an IRS agent truthfully responded to our lawyer’s query about why processing was taking so long: Z Street’s application was getting special scrutiny, the agent said, because it was related to Israel. Some applications for tax-exempt status were being sent to a special office in Washington for review of whether the applicants’ policy positions conflicted with those of the Obama administration.
Marcus goes on to describe what was learned as a result of Z Street’s 2010 lawsuit, that the IRS was looking for groups that conflicted with Obama’s policies, in this case the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”):
Now we know the truth, and it’s exactly as bad as we thought. IRS documents—those they didn’t “lose” or otherwise fail to produce—reveal the following:
• Our application was flagged because Z Street’s mission related to Israel, a country with terrorism. Therefore, an IRS manager in our case said in sworn testimony, the IRS needed to investigate whether Z Street was funding terror.
• Some applications for tax-exempt status were indeed being sent to IRS headquarters in Washington for more intense scrutiny. They were selected because of the applicants’ viewpoint.
• In August 2010, three other Jewish organizations applying for tax-exempt status were asked by the IRS to “explain their religious beliefs about the Land of Israel.”
….The “terror” error turns out to have been a pretext. Within weeks of President Obama’s inauguration, IRS and State Department officials began considering whether they could deny or revoke tax-exempt status for organizations that provided material support to Jews living across the Green Line—the nonborder that delineates pre-1967 Israel from the territories Israel acquired in the Six Day War. The theory was that a Jewish presence in those areas is inconsistent with U.S. policy. The IRS drew up lists of such organizations based on information from anti-Israel websites such as Electronic Intifada and MondoWeiss.
The Z Street lawsuit has just been settled and the IRS has apologized, as this DOJ announcement: reflects
The Department of Justice today announced that it has entered into a settlement with Z Street, a non-profit corporation dedicated to educating the public about various issues related to Israel and the Middle East, pending approval by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Z Street alleged that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) applied heightened scrutiny to applications for tax-exempt status received from organizations connected in any way to Israel, and applied this policy to Z Street’s application, resulting in delay. The settlement agreement includes an apology from the IRS to Z Street for the delayed processing of the group’s application for tax-exempt status.
Marcus summed up the result of the IRS targeting, in language strikingly familiar to those who followed IRS targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups:
To learn the truth, we fought in the courts for seven lonely years—defeating IRS arguments that it didn’t have to obey the First Amendment, that it was immune from the suit, and that it wasn’t obliged to produce in discovery any documents revealing why its employees did what they did. During the seven years Z Street’s application was frozen, it couldn’t raise funds. If my husband and I weren’t lawyers, able to pursue justice without getting paid, there’s no way we could have succeeded.When Z Street’s creation was announced, thousands sought to join. Then the IRS attempted to kill us. No lawsuit can remedy that assault, as the IRS knew. The settlement gives us the truth, but we can’t get back our seven years.
The Z Street case is another reminder of the danger the politicized Obama bureaucracy posed, and may still pose.
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