The immigration bill and YOU

Kevin Keane offers an interesting take on the immigration bill: What if it can be used to prevent Bush critics from getting employment?

One of the provisions requires that employer verify employment eligibility electronically before an employee starts a job. That immediately brought up some concerns about privacy and identity theft. Another concern is just plain database errors in such a huge system. Will an individual have a way to correct an incorrect listing? What happens when somebody gets accidentally deleted?

And then I remembered fellow Kosack Jesselyn Radack and her story of being blacklisted for her private-sector job.

What if BushCo was considering to use this system not just to verify the right to work, but also to deny it?

The Radack piece (from last February) is here.

There's more. The Rovian hordes may be using immigration enforcement as a way of fulfilling their dream of removing Democratic voters from the election booths. See here and here:

Ion Sancho, the supervisor of elections in Tallahassee, Fla., told McClatchy Newspapers on Thursday that Miller's office had asked for a copy of a database of registered voters. But Sancho corrected himself Friday, saying an immigration official had requested the database last August, not a federal prosecutor.

This last bit comes to us by way of the marvelous Marcy Wheeler. Her commenters are particularly informative, since they make clear that a bare handful of "iffy" cases in Florida were used to justify a fishing expedition.