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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   29624 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Realistically, the Anglosphere countries are going to have to become papieren bitte cultures if we want effective in-country immigration enforcement.

You're coupling two things where that isn't necessary: the culture of being ID'd by the officials randomly and the practise of having a central registry and thus some national ID number that uniquely identifies you. You can have the latter without having the former. Eg. There is no requirement to carry an ID with me but I've had a national ID number since birth as has everyone else here in Finland since 1962.

All you have to do is to make it effectively impossible to get a bank account, phone number, get paid and other necessities without having an ID number and then freeze those functions for people who have are illegally in the country and they'll end up largely deporting themselves.

All you have to do is to make it effectively impossible to get a bank account, phone number, get paid and other necessities without having an ID number and then freeze those functions for people who have are illegally in the country and they'll end up largely deporting themselves.

You're vastly underestimating the scale of Social Security Number (the closest the U.S. has to a "national ID number") fraud and the difficulties of enforcing it.

I don't really think it's that difficult, it's just that zero effort has been put into it. I know a guy who has repeatedly found that someone has signed up to receive benefits using his SSN. He's never even received so much as a letter in the mail to inform him that his benefits are being used.

You need to tie the national ID number to a person, and before modern online biometric verification that meant a document (the "ID card") with a biometric (signature/photo/fingerprint) that could be checked against the person presenting it.

You can get large numbers of illegals to self-deport by cutting off services, but empirically there are plenty of illegal immigrants in the US who don't have legal employment or bank accounts. In any case, the right-populist voter base wants to see visible deportations as a show of good faith. I do not think the MAGA base would consider "Universal e-verify and deport foreign criminals when you catch them" to constitute effective enforcement without more.

The MAGA base knows what e-verify is and expects it as a means of encouraging self deportation.

The problem, in the US at least, is that the people most interested in mass deportations are also the people most hostile to any kind of centralized database/identification system for citizens.

in the US at least

That's very much a US specific issue (so much that there should be a whole string of very's there).

It's also a pointless concern. The IRS already knows who you are.

I was under the impression that we do have a identification system for citizens. My newborn has to get a SS# to be added to my health insurance

We kind of do. As others noted, Social Security covers more than just citizens. It's also not actually an ID system. Your SSN is a unique identifier, but there's nothing about it that verifies your identity. It's just a number.

I should clarify that I misspoke in my prior comment - I'm talking more about a national identification system rather than merely a list of people with citizenship. A list that tells you John Smith, Fictional Nation ID# 123-456-789, is a citizen isn't much use for identification purposes (immigration enforcement or otherwise) unless it also tells you how to identify John Smith.

I should clarify that I misspoke in my prior comment - I'm talking more about a national identification system rather than merely a list of people with citizenship. A list that tells you John Smith, Fictional Nation ID# 123-456-789, is a citizen isn't much use for identification purposes (immigration enforcement or otherwise) unless it also tells you how to identify John Smith.

As soon as you have a database that assigns a unique ID to every person, other databases can (and should) use that ID as the person identifier. John Smith uses a bank account? That ID is in the bank's database. Phone number? Same thing. IRS records? Again, same ID. Drivers license? Same deal.

As long as John Smith has had any ID at all, the national ID is inherently linked to it and the ID number now tells how to identify John Smith (even if the information is outdated assuming John Smith goes off grid).

It is not only citizens that have SSNs, though. Legal Permanent Residents also get one.

Even people on work visas have SSNs.

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