Can a national identification card help solve security and illegal immigration problems?

The recent publicity involved with the illegal immigration issue illustrates how hard it is to identify someone. In the case of illegal immigrants it is how to identify those that are in the United States legally from those who have entered the country illegally but identification is a problem that transcends just immigration.

How about the bartender who needs identification information to know if they can legally serve a drink to someone, a retail store clerk in terms of selling tobacco products to minors, the airline check in agent checking someone in for a flight, or other national security checks etc. Is not the most used form of identification document the state issued driver’s license with a picture on it?

Just this week, the Ole Seagull flew to Tampa. He had to present “a government issued picture ID” as he checked in for his flight. As is the case with most people, he presented his state drivers license. The ticket agent took it, looked briefly at me to insure that the smiling face standing before her was the same as was on the license and entered the name on the driver’s license into her computer, which printed the ticket.

He then walked up to a security check point where a security person again looked at the license and boarding pass, comparing the names on each, and passed him on to the screening point. He went through the physical screening and boarded the plane.

If the Ole Seagull was a betting Seagull he would bet that nowhere in the process was a check run to see if the driver’s license presented was a validly issued license. Even if that had been done what are the odds that the picture on the drivers license presented was compared to the picture on the actual driver’ license issued to make sure that the person presenting it was actually the person to whom it was issued?

How long does it take an underage teenager to come up with a false driver’s license if they want to drink? Would it take any longer than it would for terrorist or an illegal immigrant to do the same thing? If personal identification is truly as important as it seems to be, for everything from underage drinking and national security to eligibility for government benefits and preventing illegal immigration, doesn’t it make sense to have a system that at least uses a standard format for identification and makes an attempt to validate the identification when it is presented?

Specifically, isn’t it time for a standard verifiable “National Picture ID Card,” NPIC, issued by the Department of Homeland Security? The governing words are “standard” and “verifiable.” The NPIC would be standardized in format. At a minimum it would contain a unique identification number, the picture of the bearer, standard identifying information and the holders current “Citizenship Status.”

With one Federal Agency charged with the issuing of the National Picture ID Card and the current state of information and data transmission technology, verifying the NPIC upon presentation should not be a burden. Once the card is presented, the person using it for identification enters the unique identification number into the system and gets verification in the form of, what should be, a duplicate of the card they have in their hand. By comparing the two the appropriate identification determinations can be made.

Once the cards are issued, how they are used is dependent upon the identification problem being addressed. In the case of security that could be a verification of the fact that the person presenting the NPIC is who they say they are. In the case of underage drinking it might be identification verification plus age, and in the case of illegal immigration as a means of separating legal immigrants from illegal.

How many fewer illegal immigrants would there be if there was a national requirement that such a card be shown by EVERY job applicant and verified by EVERY employer with stiff criminal penalties for non compliance. If employment is the major reason for illegal immigration it would do no good to cross the border illegally because they would not have an NPIC to present for a job and even if they forged one it would not withstand the verification process.

Oh the Ole Seagull is not naïve and knows full well that there would be problems but he also believes that none of them would be insurmountable if there was a national consensus to solve them. The money it would cost for such a system would be pale in comparison to the money that would be saved if such a system helped prevent just one “9-11,” control the flow of illegal immigration across our boarders, or reduce fraudulent government claims, etc.