New ID is likely out of alien plan

WASHINGTON - Senators working on a sweeping immigration bill likely will abandon the idea of a new high-tech ID card for workers because it’s too expensive, a key negotiator said.

Instead, their emerging legislation, which they’ve promised will crack down on employers who hire illegal aliens, likely will seek to expand a system, called E-Verify, that employers can use to check the legal status of workers,mainly using Social Security numbers. The system, which is now purely voluntary, has been criticized as error-prone and vulnerable to fraud.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., members of the bipartisan Senate immigration negotiating group, had championed creation of a biometric ID card instead that would use personal markers such as fingerprints to make it easy for employers to check the status of prospective hires.

But Graham said cost estimates were higher than he expected.

Graham said no final decision had been made on ditching the biometric ID card idea, which had also sparked civil liberties concerns, and he declined to say how much such a card would cost.

A study by the University of California, Berkeley Law School’s Warren Institute last year estimated start-up costs to the government for such a program would top $22 billion.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/13/2013

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