Americas Independent Movement

Obama’s National ID Card: Here It Comes
Written by Gary North

“Your papers, please.” As a kid, I heard radio shows where someone with a German accent would ask this. Now it’s coming to America. Only worse. There won’t be papers. There will be a plastic card backed up by a data base with your vital information in it.

The Bush Administration rammed this through in 2005. It was never implemented. States fought against it. Now Obama is trying to get it through again.

The Rutherford Institute is battling this.

The Real ID Act would essentially establish a national ID by requiring states to comply with costly and restrictive federal licensing standards aimed at creating a national database of drivers’ licenses. Alternately derided as a national ID card, a violation of the Tenth Amendment, an unfunded mandate, and a threat to civil liberties, the Real ID program has largely stalled, primarily due to mounting opposition from the states, many of which have adopted laws or resolutions opposing it. . . .

The coalition’s letter to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime is available here.

“Civil and privacy rights advocates, as well as liberal-, conservative-, and libertarian-leaning organizations, have long raised concerns that a national ID card would enable the government to track citizens and, thus, jeopardize the privacy rights of Americans,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “When all is said and done, the adoption of a national ID card serves one purpose only: to provide the government with the ultimate control over the American people.”

The Act was signed into law in 2005. It gave the states three years to comply. The data will include individual birth certificates and other personal information.

The cost? A staggering $230 million a year. States are resisting.

States must do the scanning of information. They will have to hire more staff.

Can you imagine the lines for this?

For instance, the law requires that all 245 million license and state ID holders in the United States visit their local DMVs to acquire a special identification card. Citizens who do not have this special identification by a given date will not be able to perform important yet routine tasks such as travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, enter federal government buildings or take advantage of most government services. The law requires that each person provide a photo ID, birth certificate, proof of their Social Security number and proof of residence in order to receive the identification. This information will then be stored in massive databases maintained by the states and shared among them. Once the DMV receives all the necessary information, it will issue the applicant a new identification card.

The states have been successful in delaying this. But it is clear that both political parties at the national level favor this law.

Resistance at the state level has bought us time. But it is clear what is coming. We are moving toward a police state. Our best hope is the bankruptcy of the federal government.