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Ezra Klein reports that the new Democratic immigration proposal includes a shiny new way to enforce employment laws:

I don’t think the Democrats are going to like me calling this a biometric national ID card, as they go to great lengths to say that it is not a national ID card, and make it “unlawful for any person, corporation; organization local, state, or federal law enforcement officer; local or state government; or any other entity to require or even ask an individual cardholder to produce their social security card for any purpose other than electronic verification of employment eligibility and verification of identity for Social Security Administration purposes.”

But it’s still a biometric national ID card. It’s handed out by the Social Security Administration and employers are required to check it when hiring new employees. Essentially, if you want to participate in the American economy, you need this card.

I’ve written about this before, and it’s fine with me if they call it a national ID card. I’m in favor. It’s not as if these things are security panaceas or anything, but they’d be pretty useful for things like reducing employment fraud or voter fraud. And what are the drawbacks? Every time this comes up I hear lots of vague but alarming talk about police states and the end of liberty, but nothing concrete about how this would really change things much from the status quo ante, in which most of us have to produce IDs multiple times a day merely to get through our lives. As for making it easier for the federal government to track us, please. They already have all the tools they need to track us. It’s called a Social Security number. A non-fakable Social Security number would be an improvement, not a further infringement on our liberty.

The main difference a national ID would make is that if the federal government provided these cards free of charge, then poor people would have a reliable form of ID too, not just rich and middle class folks. Could they be abused? Sure, but no more than our current hodgepodge of SSNs and corporate ID cards. Other countries seem to have them without descending into totalitarianism.

Unfortunately, as Ezra says, this whole thing is a nonstarter: “The oddity of this strategy, of course, is that anti-immigration sentiments run highest among the same communities that are most opposed to national ID cards.” There’s not much chance of this proposal getting anywhere.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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