Grassley Beats Dead Horse ... Still Unsatisfied with Health Bill's Provisions on Undocumented Immigrants

By Andrea Nill, Think Progress. Posted September 24, 2009.

At today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced that there are “serious outstanding issues that have yet to be resolved” in Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) bill, particularly when it comes to “the enforcement against subsidies for illegal aliens.” Grassley claimed that the Baucus bill “fails the test in at least three ways”:

First, although the mark appears to require the new exchanges to verify Social Security Numbers [SSNs] and citizenship or legal status, it does not include blocking of Social Security numbers, REAL IDs, verification of address and prior year income, or any other mechanism that verifies identity to prevent identity theft.

Second, it appears to contain privacy protections limiting the use of data collected by exchanges, but it does not allow information sharing with the Internal Revenue Service [IRS] and the Social Security Administration [SSA] to detect and preclude the multiple uses of same Social Security Numbers.

And finally, I would also note that that the designation of Indian tribes as “Express Lane Agency” would allow them to enroll anyone under the age of 22 in Medicaid and CHIP and anyone of any age in an exchange without verification of citizenship. And we have discussed so often in this committee, in the past, the role of Indian tribes in verifying citizenship has been questionable.

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Grassley’s first point of criticism is a transparent attempt to derail the health care debate by pivoting to a contentious discussion on the use of REAL ID-compliant licenses and identifications cards. Full compliance with the REAL ID Act is not required until 2017 and most states aren’t anywhere near meeting the deadline. At least 15 states have passed legislation blocking the implementation of REAL ID, others have passed resolutions denouncing it, and there’s currently pending legislation in both the House and Senate that would repeal the REAL ID Act’s driver’s license and identification card provisions. Ultimately, a REAL ID provision would affect US citizens more than immigrants as every single American would be required to obtain a compliant form of national identification and pay for the infrastructure necessary to implement an expensive national ID system.

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Andrea Nill is an Immigration Researcher/Blogger for ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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