Why the Left and the Right Should Oppose Government Registries

By Adam Bates, Alex Nowrasteh Adam Bates, Alex Nowrasteh

During his campaign, President-elect Trump’s most consistent policy position was support for harsh immigration enforcement policies, including mass deportation of unlawful immigrants. Troublingly, government identity databases created for other purposes, many of them noble, could significantly increase the effectiveness of a Trump deportation scheme. The frightening specter of the federal government using applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to target young unlawful immigrants would be a humanitarian and economic disaster.

President Obama‘s 2012 DACA executive order granted a temporary renewable work permit and protection from deportation to some unlawful immigrants brought here as children. About 665,000 signed up for it, allowing them to work legally for the first time in their lives. The problem, however, is that this executive action could be overturned by the next president.

Government registries of vulnerable communities are always only one election away from being abused.

Trump has promised to do that on his first day.

Ending DACA is bad enough. The bigger danger is that these unlawful immigrants had to give their names, addresses and other personal information to the federal government in order to obtain DACA in the first place. The government will still have all of that identity …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute