A REAL Invasion of Privacy

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2005.

If at first you don't succeed, then try again.

Both the Bush administration and its conservative base have taken that maxim to heart with a vengeance. After realizing that it would be impossible to avoid a Democratic filibuster of a proposed bill allowing drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the president's first term, Republicans piggy-backed the volatile proposition into a budget measure (which is immune to filibustering) in his second one. The fact that Democrats accused the opposition of bending the rules didn't seem to bother anyone. Republicans in the House and Senate recently tried the same thing with the REAL ID Act, a contentious piece of so-called immigration reform inserted surreptitiously into a House version of the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations bill. The bill passed in the House but was removed at the last minute from a Senate version of the supplemental bill when its sponsor, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, realized it didn't have enough support. Stalled in conference committee right now, the bill has sparked an outcry among immigration groups across the nation, as well as civil liberties organizations worldwide.

"This is a refugee-bashing bill that would not protect Americans from terrorists and suspected terrorists already categorically barred from asylum," argues Erin Callahan, Western Regional Director of Amnesty International. "If passed, the Act would place burdens on asylum-seekers that would likely fall hardest on the most vulnerable among them."

The ACLU agrees. "The REAL ID Act is a civil rights disaster," explains Ahilan Arulanantham, attorney for the ACLU's Southern California chapter. "Several provisions effectively limit or end judicial review of immigration cases, including refugee cases, and that is a very serious issue."

The REAL ID Act (H.R. 418) encompasses four major provisions ostensibly designed to correct what Wisconsin Representative F. James Sensenbrenner called in a February 9 discussion on the House floor national "vulnerabilities" on "terrorist travel" noted by the 9/11 commission's report. Sensenbrenner, who also serves as the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, introduced H.R. 418 into the House version of the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations bill after the GOP was unsuccessful in attaching similar legislation, opposed by both the commissioners and majority of 9/11 family organizations, to the expansive Intelligence Reform Bill that passed in December 2004 with an overwhelming 89-2 vote.

But in the spirit of the 21st-century's never-say-die GOP, Rep. Sensenbrenner pushed onward with REAL ID, after holding up passage of the Intelligence Reform Bill because it dropped the Act's provisions, which were opposed by Harry Reid and Bill Frist alike. Finally, unable to get the votes on its own, Reprensentative Sensenbrenner snuck the bill on to something else entirely, to the indignation of immigrants and asylum seekers worldwide.

In a recent TomPaine.com article. Michigan Congressman John Conyers argues that the REAL ID Act is "anti-immigration legislation" and includes "provisions limiting [America's] asylum laws, making it easier to deport legal immigrants, denying immigrants long-standing habeus corpus rights, imposing onerous new driver's license requirements on the states, and waiving all federal laws concerning the construction of fences and barriers." Sensenbrenner's aforementioned rationale for REAL ID on the House floor is, of course, far more general and alarmist, insisting that the "Act contains a common-sense provision that helps protect Americans from terrorists who have infiltrated the United States" and that the current immigration problems Americans are experiencing are due to, what else, "liberal activist judges."

But civil rights organizations are livid that, once again, the GOP is using the back door to get its highly unpopular policies passed.

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com, while finding the time to rant for Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, AOL and others. His first novel, The Dangerous Perhaps, should be done by the time the War on Terrorism is over.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Rights and Liberties! Sign up now »