III. Combining national ID with regularization of illegal immigrant

There are about 12,000,000 illegal immigrants in the United States. There are about 570,000 illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom (they call them “irregular migrants” there). Some see the national biometric ID scheme as playing a role in the United Kingdom similar to the guest worker program proposed by President George Bush. For example, the pro-Tony Blair Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) suggested that the U.K. illegal immigrant population should be offered amnesty. IPPR director Nick Pearce points out that “It is inconceivable that these people will all be deported, even in the wildest fantasies of the anti-immigration right. The Immigration Service has more than enough on its hands policing our borders and removing newly arrived failed asylum-seekers. To go round the country finding, detaining and then deporting up to half a million people who don’t have regular status simply will not happen.”

The IPPR stresses that no single policy will prevent all forms of what it calls “irregular migration,” and most of the policy options being discussed — tightening border controls, toughening employment legislation, and encouraging voluntary returns — are already being tried to some extent by the U.K. government. Only one option, regularization or amnesty, stands any chance of significantly reducing the size of the illegal/irregular population, the IPPR argues. A regularization process, the IPPR says, would raise “1 billion for the Treasury through tax revenues, and “could be combined with the issuing of ID cards to foreign nationals in 2008.” This, then, is the punch line.

With few exceptions, there is an unstated consensus in the United Kingdom that some day a government — if not this one, then the next one; if not the next one, then the one after the next one — is going to have to let these people stay. It has been politically impossible for governments which have made tough immigration policy a key election plank to be seen to “reward” illegal immigrants, so historically the policies implemented have been heavy on symbolism, light on effect. If, however, a government can claim that its e-Borders and biometric ID measures are shutting off the entry points, that illegal immigrants from this point on will find it very difficult to come into the country and even more difficult to stay in the country unnoticed, that there are clear economic benefits to bringing illegal workers into the tax system, and that this is a one time, “give yourself up or you’re out” offer, maybe a government can sell it to the public.

All this is not unlike the offer of guest worker permits to the millions of illegal immigrants who are already in the United States, but at the same time pointing to a much hardened border defense and tougher immigration policies as barriers against future waves of illegal immigration.”