Senators push plan to require all U.S. citizens to carry worker ID cards

There's more talk on Capitol Hill about requiring all U.S. citizens to carry a worker ID card before getting a job. It's part of a major overhaul of immigration policy, and the plan could go before President Obama as soon as this week.

All U.S. citizens would be required to carry an ID cards according to this plan. It's meant to keep companies from hiring illegal immigrants. No matter where you apply for a job, under the plan, you would have to have a card carrying bio-metric information on a microchip. It's like your fingerpints, or a scan of the veins in your hands.

The ID cards would basically prove you are who you say you are, and that you are a legal citizen of the United States. The program is being pushed in the U.S. Senate by Democrat Chuck Schumer (D- New York), and Republican Lindsay Graham (R- South Carolina).


Unlike the optional E-verify system that some companies use, this would be mandatory for all companies to use.

It's drawing some criticism from privacy advocates, who say this moving toward a national ID card, giving the government too much power to track you. Sen. Graham says it's simply a way to keep companies and employees honest.

"What I want to make sure is when an employer is presented with a social security card, you can easily verify that it is real and genuine and the person presenting the card is who they say they are. If we will do that one thing, it will make it very hard to hire illegals," said Sen. Graham.

"We're talking about fingerprinting every single american worker, and that card, in turn, will probably be used not only to work but also to travel, to vote, perhaps even to own a gun," responded Chris Calabrese with the ACLU.

Critics also point to the expanding role of the social security number, which was originally only supposed to track your social security account, but now identifies a person for a variety of reasons.

Sen. Graham was quick to point out, this program would not expand like that.