The requirement to show a Social Security number effectively prevents undocumented workers from Mexico and other countries from having a drivers license, a crucial form of identification not only to drive legally but for all kinds of other activities as well. And in many parts of the United States not driving severely limits job opportunities.

But it is important to see that what is involved is not fundamentally an issue for immigrants. The attack is more sweeping, and targets the entire working class. It is the latest effort by the employers to establish an internal passport, a document with a federal ID number and a digital photo or other "biometric identifiers" that can provide cops, employers, creditors, or landlords with information about any individual.

While such a national ID card plan was floated under President Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s, it gained impetus and was temporarily codified in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, signed by President William Clinton in 1996.

Open attempts by the government to institute a national ID card have been met with widespread opposition by working people and other defenders of democratic rights, and rightly so. But the federal and state governments have continued to push on this front and are trying to set up through the back door what they could not politically achieve through the front door.

The fact is that year by year the employers and the federal and state governments have been expanding mandatory identification checks, such as at airports, at police roadblocks, and thousands of stop-and-search operations by local cops. In fact, not having an ID when checking in for an airplane flight is one of the triggers for an interrogation before boarding a plane. National databases of drivers license numbers, Social Security numbers, and other such identification tags have given the cops and other police agencies immediate access to a person's history.

Capitalist politicians always try to justify these measure by claiming they will be used to prevent "illegal immigration" or "crime" or "terrorism." In doing this they try to draw part of the working class into scapegoating other layers of working people and into believing that we have something in common with the imperialist government in Washington. They hope to blind workers and farmers to the growing unconstitutional violations of the right to privacy, numb us to an increasing number of cops and their unwarranted checks and searches, and make us believe the government has a right to keep track of the movement and history of any individual.

The rulers are responding to the increasing resistance of working people by undermining democratic rights and beefing up the repressive forces of the state.

Since the beginning of the modern working-class movement, the capitalist class has stepped up incursions on democratic rights in response to the development of consciousness and combativity among the toilers. That was the purpose of the Palmer raids that targeted union militants, socialists, and communists in the United States in the years following the Russian Revolution; the Smith Act frame-ups aimed at revolutionary communist workers on the eve of World War II; and FBI spying and disruption aimed at critics of U.S. government policy--from the Black and antiwar movements to the Socialist Workers Party.

Today, the very combativity the bosses fear is growing, and is beginning to pose an obstacle to their attack on fundamental democratic rights. Immigrant workers, gaining confidence from union-organizing victories and from their growing presence in U.S. society, are shouting, "We produce the wealth: we demand our rights!" and are calling for an end to requirements that every person must carry and show a Social Security card on demand.

It is in the interest of every worker and farmer to build and support such protests.
 
 
Related article:
Protests for drivers licenses highlight attack on rights of all working people  
 
 
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