WASHINGTON (April 6, 2009) – The REAL ID Act, written in the wake of the September 11 attacks, has created the rules and regulations for states to follow, establishing minimum standards for secure state identification documents. Currently, a new piece of legislation named “Providing for Additional Security in States’ Identification Act of 2009” or PASS ID Act is accumulating signatures in the Senate and may be introduced. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows how this legislation would change the current benchmarks for secure IDs.
The report, “The Appearance of Driver License Security: REAL ID Final Regulations and Proposed PASS ID Act of 2009,” was prepared by Janice Kephart, the Center’s Director of National Security Policy and former 9/11 Staff Counsel. It is available on the Center’s website at: http://cis.org/PASSID
The changes the Pass ID Act would make to current law include:
- Push full compliance out until 2021, 20 years after 9/11 and four years past REAL ID.
- State laws preempt the PASS ID Act, including privacy laws.
- States may file a justification for noncompliance and receive an extension.
- Pushes off compliance for use of electronic verification of lawful status (via the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE Program) until January 1, 2013.
- Deletes the requirement that “the applicant must provide sufficient documentation for a state to both verify identity and authenticate documents presented for the purpose of establishing identity.”
- Deletes requirement that applicants provide a Social Security number, only needing to “take appropriate steps to validate” the number if the applicant “has been issued a Social Security number.”
- Deletes the benchmarks and timetable for compliance.
- Deletes requirement that states “make reasonable efforts” to ensure that applicant does not have more than one driver’s license/non-driver ID under a different or same identity in state where applying, or has been issued a DL/ID in another state. This weakness was exploited by the 9/11 hijackers.
- Deletes listing of acceptable documents to prove date of birth.
- Deletes requirement that states verify birth certificates through the Electronic Verification of Vital Events system, as it becomes available.
- Deletes requiring two documents to show principal place of residence, only requiring one, the same standard the 9/11 hijackers exploited to obtain fraudulent ID cards in Virginia.
- Deletes requirement that DL/ID not be issued until resolution with issuing office if there is a non-match or a document does not appear authentic.
- Deletes requirement that applicant supply full legal name.
- Deletes applicant declaration that information presented is true and correct under penalty of perjury.
- Deletes some of the major anti-tampering requirements including that the ID require an “easily identifiable visual or tactile feature” for cursory examination without aids.
What’s become of Aunti Zeituni?
By Jon Feere
CIS Blog, April 1, 2009
http://cis.org/feere/AuntiZeituniAprilFools
EXCERPT: President Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango was finally deported today, exactly six years after being ordered by a judge to leave the country.
April fools!
More E-Verify
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, April 1, 2009
http://cis.org/node/1137
EXCERPT: Over at National Review Online, pro-amnesty activist Richard Nadler finds my numbers about the rapid spread of E-Verify ‘puzzling.’ It’s not clear why.
>Non-Discrimination in Border Enforcement
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, April 1, 2009
http://cis.org/node/1136
EXCERPT: No, I don’t mean avoiding profiling of people at the border. Instead, the Obama administration is avoiding profiling of borders themselves. The kind of camera towers that are part of the ‘virtual fence’ along segments of the Mexican border are now planned for the northern border as well. On its own, this is probably a good idea, but DHS Secretary Napolitano revealed the administration’s thinking behind the move when she told a border conference last week that ‘One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feelings among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border.’ In other words, this is just the global application of the Norman Mineta Doctrine that Norwegian-American grannies from South Dakota pose exactly the same risk as single, young, Muslim men from Saudi Arabia.
By John Miano
CIS Blog, April 1, 2009
http://cis.org/node/1135
EXCERPT: One again H-1B season is upon us. Today USCIS starts taking application for next year’s batch of H-1B visas. Although we are in the midst of a severe economic downturn, it is likely the entire visa quota will be exhausted — demonstrating industry’s demand for cheap labor is insatiable.
CIS Featured in Recent Newscasts
By Bryan Griffith
CIS Blog, April 2, 2009
http://cis.org/griffith/onlinevideos4209
DETAILS: Mark Krikorian, Steven Camarota, and our estimates of the illegal-alien population are featured in recent newscasts.
Stephen Steinlight writes for Jewcy.com:
The comparison alleged between the genuine dangers posed by mass Mexican immigration to US social cohesion and sovereignty and pernicious allegations of "Jewish dual loyalty" is wholly false. There is no parallel. First, one must consider the historically unprecedented scale of Mexican immigration, legal and illegal, which dwarfs all other immigration. If we took the 10 next largest immigrant groups, their combined total would be less than that of Mexicans. Mexico also shares a 2,000 mile border with the US, the longest on earth between a First World and a Third World economy. The most worrying matter, irredentist sentiment, is a burning, powerful issue for Mexicans and totally inapplicable to Jews. I was not aware that Jews harbor territorial claims against the US! The very idea is Monty Python-like. But polling by Zogby International reveals some 62% of Mexicans believe the American southwest is Mexican, not American. If the goals of "Progress by Pesach" were met and we amnestied 11.5 million illegal aliens, by far the greatest part Mexican, and passed "comprehensive immigration reform," whose main goal is doubling legal immigration, not promoting amnesty (amnesty is what is known on Capitol Hill as a "weapon of mass distraction"), within a decade or so we’d see huge Mexican majorities in all the border states of the southwest, a majority that rejects American sovereignty there. This is a recipe for social unrest, at the very least. In addition, Mexican "immigrants" (I prefer the term "transnational population" because they are living in two societies simultaneously and haven’t decided to which they belong) have naturalized at a shockingly infinitesimal rate. Under 20% of this huge demographic has bothered to become US citizens, suggesting their sense of national belonging to the US is extremely tenuous, to put it mildly. On top of which, the last three Presidents of Mexico have pushed a program for a "Greater Mexico" and have asserted the claim that they "represent" Mexicans living in the US. Indeed, President Vincente Fox went so far as to assert he speaks on behalf of all Hispanics/Latinos in the US, regardless of national origin. The Mexican government has also stated it is the "protector" of Mexicans within the US. Mexicans in this country legally require no protection (they might well in the brutally corrupt oligarchy that is Mexico), and the US in not the dying Ottoman Empire: we don’t need to grant "concessions" to outside powers to safeguard minority populations. Such arrogant, outrageous intervention in US internal affairs is reflected in the conduct of the vast Mexican consular system within the US engaged in massive violation of the Geneva Protocols regarding the activities of consulates: they have inserted themselves into our domestic affairs in the context of labor relations, health care provision, law enforement, etc. When the largest immigrant group in America, one that will increase by some 66-100 million within 20 years if "comprehensive immigration reform were to pass, fails to naturalize, regards US territory in which they reside as belonging to their country of origin, and are encouraged by the government of Mexico to regard Mexico as their home — all Mexicans are dual citizens as a matter of Mexican law –we face a serious problem.
The American-Jewish community, on the other hand, represents perhaps the single most successful example of patriotic assimilation of any group in the history of American immigration. Unlike other immigrant groups in their early days in the US, Jews brought no loyalty to their countries of origin because they had been persecuted there. If Jews were to come today under the same conditions that brought them here during the "Great Waves" they would be called refugees, not immigrants. Jews were also the only immigrant group that migrated in one direction only. They embraced Americanization fervently because it was the best thing that had ever happened to them. They learned English within two years of arrival, not two generations (the norm for other groups), and because Jews were alone among immigrants in having virtually universal male literacy within only a year or two of arrival they were earning wages comprable to natives. (Current immigrants make an astounding 23% less because of lack of education: some 60-63% of Mexican and Central American immigrants lack a high school diploma. Their poverty has nothing to do with legal status.) The charge of "dual loyalty," suggesting American Jews are torn between allegiance to the US and to Israel, is an anti-Semitic canard. The very small number of Jews who see themselves primarily as Zionists make aliyah. Undoubtedly a tiny fraction of Jews living in the US may feel authentically torn, but even they seek to square those loyalties by arguing that American interests and values are congruent with those of Israel. The great majority of American Jews, however, hardly feel as if they are living in the Diaspora. They are fully at home in America. The great majority of American Jews are patriots (it’s a good way to define oneself when one lives in the freest society on earth: I’m appalled by those who see "patriotism" as somehow "fascist") who have achieved the ideal balance between their particularistic identity (which appropriately involves deep concern about the security and well-being of Israel) with a much stronger sense of national belonging.
There is no "dual loyalty" within the American-Jewish community that is a cause of concern to any but paranoid anti-Semites. On the other hand, the fact that the fastest growing demograhic in the nation regards a huge expanse of US territory as belonging to its country of origin (to which we are geographically contiguous), has in essence refused to join the polity by failing to naturalize, has resisted learning the language of the dominant culture, and is strongly influenced by an interventionist Mexican government are causes of deep, legitimate concern.
