ID cards and migrant motivations

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IvanV
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ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by IvanV » Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:18 am

TopBadger wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:57 am
The solution to the small boats crisis is clear...

Given that a common reason for people choosing to come to the UK rather than stay in France is that they speak the language, we need to change the UK's official language to French so they might as well look for work in France and not risk the crossing.

Simple really.
I think the major practical reason is that we don't have a uniform compulsory identity card system in Britain, unlike just about everywhere on the continent. The people who oppose identity cards cite civil liberties, but that's clearly a cover for their real reason, which I've never managed to work out.

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ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by JQH » Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:29 pm

You don't have to have an ID card in this country if you don't mind not voting.
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Brightonian » Fri Mar 10, 2023 11:07 pm

IvanV wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:18 am
TopBadger wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:57 am
The solution to the small boats crisis is clear...

Given that a common reason for people choosing to come to the UK rather than stay in France is that they speak the language, we need to change the UK's official language to French so they might as well look for work in France and not risk the crossing.

Simple really.
I think the major practical reason is that we don't have a uniform compulsory identity card system in Britain, unlike just about everywhere on the continent. The people who oppose identity cards cite civil liberties, but that's clearly a cover for their real reason, which I've never managed to work out.
Do you mean that it's easier for undocumented people to live and work in Britain than in other countries? People are required to prove they have the right to live or work in Britain if they want a home or job in Britain. And although some landlords, employers etc. turn a blind eye to undocumented tenants and workers, surely that's the same in other countries.

(Edit: not against ID cards, in fact I'm in favour)

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by nekomatic » Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:31 am

IvanV wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:18 am
I think the major practical reason is that we don't have a uniform compulsory identity card system in Britain, unlike just about everywhere on the continent.
You’re saying that the major reason people travel to Britain to make themselves known to the authorities and claim asylum rather than doing that in France is that unlike France we don’t issue cards to those people that the authorities can check to know who they are, except that oh actually we do?
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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Gfamily » Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:37 am

nekomatic wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 12:31 am
IvanV wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:18 am
I think the major practical reason is that we don't have a uniform compulsory identity card system in Britain, unlike just about everywhere on the continent.
You’re saying that the major reason people travel to Britain to make themselves known to the authorities and claim asylum rather than doing that in France is that unlike France we don’t issue cards to those people that the authorities can check to know who they are, except that oh actually we do?
TBF; to some extent, until recently, you could get away without any need to hold or confirm your identity.
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More recently, some people will have suffered from the absence of an accepted means of doing so - but we have traditionally not had an ID document as a requirement
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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Millennie Al » Sat Mar 11, 2023 2:28 am

IvanV wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:18 am
The people who oppose identity cards cite civil liberties, but that's clearly a cover for their real reason, which I've never managed to work out.
Identity cards make it very easy to identify people - obviously. This makes it easy to discriminate between people. Nasty authoritarian policies usually rely heavily on being able to discriminate, so that the nasty part gets applied to the right group of people. If it applied to everyone equally, it might be too unpopular to be workable. So by making it a bit harder to discriminate, it makes it harder to have some highly undesireable policies.

Unfortunately, modern Britain seems to have a mixture of forgetting just how nasty some policies are, and not caring about nasty policies applied to other people. An example of the latter is the Windrush scandal. I believe the treatment of the victims is far less hated than it should be because lots of people effectively wear a permanent ID which they think exempts themselves from the nasty policy - the colour of their skin.

There is an inherent part of human nature to discriminate between the ingroup and the outgroup and one of the things which can retrain it is the inability to tell which group a person belongs to. As factors such as colour of skin, general appearance, accent, etc become less reliable in modern society for classifying people, there is an instinct to reach for some other means. But any reliable means is a great temptation to introduce nasty rules. The easier the classification the more petty the reason can be for a rule.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by nekomatic » Sat Mar 11, 2023 8:02 am

My point was that if someone claims asylum here, they are not trying to disappear from the authorities and get by living and working without official ID. They are literally appearing to the authorities and, as it happens, signing up for one of the ID cards which apparently we don’t have, so that they can live and work legally.

Of course some may claim that nobody arriving in a small boat wants to claim asylum until they get intercepted and need some way of trying to avoid getting removed, but if true then it is weird how many of them were well advised to do so as their asylum claims are accepted by the notoriously (checks notes) lenient Home Office.

It’s slightly tedious to have to go through this again but the objection to the Labour ID scheme, from me and many others anyway, was not that it might provide me with a convenient card to prove my identity, but that it set up a compulsory national biometric ID database which it was planned would then be used to identify people by their biometrics. This would have been hugely expensive and many experts at the time said it wouldn’t work, although with the passage of time and the advancement of technology China seems to be making good progress in developing similar ideas.
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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by WFJ » Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:50 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 2:28 am
IvanV wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:18 am
The people who oppose identity cards cite civil liberties, but that's clearly a cover for their real reason, which I've never managed to work out.
Identity cards make it very easy to identify people - obviously. This makes it easy to discriminate between people. Nasty authoritarian policies usually rely heavily on being able to discriminate, so that the nasty part gets applied to the right group of people. If it applied to everyone equally, it might be too unpopular to be workable. So by making it a bit harder to discriminate, it makes it harder to have some highly undesireable policies.

Unfortunately, modern Britain seems to have a mixture of forgetting just how nasty some policies are, and not caring about nasty policies applied to other people. An example of the latter is the Windrush scandal. I believe the treatment of the victims is far less hated than it should be because lots of people effectively wear a permanent ID which they think exempts themselves from the nasty policy - the colour of their skin.

There is an inherent part of human nature to discriminate between the ingroup and the outgroup and one of the things which can retrain it is the inability to tell which group a person belongs to. As factors such as colour of skin, general appearance, accent, etc become less reliable in modern society for classifying people, there is an instinct to reach for some other means. But any reliable means is a great temptation to introduce nasty rules. The easier the classification the more petty the reason can be for a rule.
Windrush is an odd example for you to choose when the issue was that a large section of citizens were unable to provide documentation of their citizenship because it was never provided.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:53 am

Its obviously a complicated area to research but as far as I'm aware the main reasons undocumented migrants choose the UK are: the presence of family, friends of wider kinship networks; the relative ease of getting paid employment; knowledge of the language and culture; and a perception that Britain is a relatively free and liberal society (which will be particularly attractive to people who have been persecuted due to their political or religious beliefs, ethnicity, gender expression or sexuality).

Concerning the ease of getting a job, the UK employment market has been different to other European states. If we take the youth unemployment rate as a proxy for how easy it is for someone with little or no experience to get a job then in 2019* it was 11.4% in the UK, 32.6% in Spain, 29.1% in Italy and 20.7% in France. Germany was 6.2%, and Germany is also a destination for a lot of migrants. So a combination of greater knowledge of English among some populations and it being generally easier to get a job compared to some other major EU economies makes the UK is a much more attractive proposition for migrants who want to work.


*I looked at 2019 because Covid changed a lot.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:06 am

As for ID cards, the issue isn't so much what card people are expected to carry but the existence of a population register. The latter is a single national database which holds data on all people lawfully resident. Where I am people have a legal obligation to update the register whenever their situation changes (eg moving house).

The relevance for migration is that many things are impossible or difficult for someone to do lawfully who isn't on the register - eg getting a bank account, getting a regular job, getting a mobile phone, renting from a private landlord, signing up with a GP etc.

This doesn't just affect undocumented migrants. People with a job offer and are eligible for a work permit still find that the have to wait weeks or months until they can get a bank account, rent an apartment or get a phone sim card because it takes time to sort out the government bureaucracy.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:07 am

Here is new thread, split from the Rishi Sunak discussion.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Grumble » Sat Mar 11, 2023 2:08 pm

JQH wrote:
Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:29 pm
You don't have to have an ID card in this country if you don't mind not voting.
And this is the heart of the contradiction in the policy. How can you make it compulsory to have ID but not provide ID?
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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by bob sterman » Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:39 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:06 am
As for ID cards, the issue isn't so much what card people are expected to carry but the existence of a population register. The latter is a single national database which holds data on all people lawfully resident. Where I am people have a legal obligation to update the register whenever their situation changes (eg moving house).
It can be much worse than this. The Labour planned National Identity Register - wasn't just meant to be a database of identity details - it was going to contain records of every time someone's ID details were checked digitally against the register - e.g. interactions with government departments, health services, financial institutions, and a range of other commercial organisations would have been recorded. So the database could be trawled for crime / security threats - real "surveillance state" stuff.

Here's what the 2006 Identity Cards act said...
The following may be recorded in the entry in the Register for an individual—

(a)particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual's entry has been provided to a person;

(b)particulars of every person to whom such information has been provided on such an occasion;

(c)other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information.
Notice it didn't say "an occasion" - it said "every occasion".

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by noggins » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:14 pm

Yep “Id cards” are a nonsense.

The issue is The Identity Register.

Are you in favour of a single omnipotent national identity register?

And if so, what should be on it, who has what access, what control will parliament have over it, do you think this lot can build it without f.cking it up?

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by dyqik » Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:44 pm

noggins wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:14 pm
Yep “Id cards” are a nonsense.

The issue is The Identity Register.

Are you in favour of a single omnipotent national identity register?

And if so, what should be on it, who has what access, what control will parliament have over it, do you think this lot can build it without f.cking it up?
And bearing in mind that it will be hacked and all the data leaked, at some point.

This happened with the data for my Federal background check.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:23 am

WFJ wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:50 am
Windrush is an odd example for you to choose when the issue was that a large section of citizens were unable to provide documentation of their citizenship because it was never provided.
For some of the Windrush victims the problem was not proving their identity, but proving their rights. For example, that they had lived in the UK for the necessary period to gain the right to remain. Having an identity card does not help with that - especially if it's a problem because the government ordered destruction of the records that would be useful in proving the rights. To prove rights you also need a database containing everything relevant, which is an even bigger problem than an identity card. Bear in mind that the database must include anything that may become relevant in future. Some Windrush victims were unaware of the need to prove residence because at the time they arrived there was no such requirement, so a database which only recorded what was necessary at the time would not have helped them - that would have required a database which speculatively recorded as much as poeeible about everyone just in case it was needed. Do you really think that such a system is workable or safe?

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by noggins » Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:29 pm

Invoking Windrush to justify Id cards is stupid or dishonest.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by dyqik » Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:37 pm

noggins wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:29 pm
Invoking Windrush to justify Id cards is stupid or dishonest.
It really isn't either stupid or dishonest. A basic universal ID card that was linked to immigration/right to work records and maybe passports and updated correctly would have avoided the Windrush problem. A social security/National insurance number type system would work for that. A sort of ID/right to live, work, apply for passport and collect benefits card. This is pretty much how a social security number works in the US.

That does not mean that any more information than that should be added to that database or system, or that records of access/use of that card are needed.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:03 pm

On the population registers it does seem that this is an issue where there does seem to be a profound difference in political culture between the UK and US on one hand and most of Europe on the other.

Population registers are run centrally or at the municipal level in the great majority of EEA states and in my experience they are not controversial. Certainly they could be misused or hacked, but then there are also benefits. I remember during the Brexit debates having to explain to incredulous Europeans and that the UK didn't know how many people were lawfully resident, and it had to organize a Roman style census every decade to find out.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by WFJ » Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:09 pm

noggins wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:29 pm
Invoking Windrush to justify Id cards is stupid or dishonest.
Who did that? MA gave Windrush as a rather bizarre example of bad things that could happen with ID cards.* I only pointed out that ID cards would, if anything, have helped.

That being said ID cards are a strange British obsession/paranoia. It's up there with guns in the US and speed limits in Germany.

* I think. To be honest it's such a nonsensical example that I still think I must have misunderstood.

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by noggins » Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:42 pm

dyqik wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:37 pm
noggins wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:29 pm
Invoking Windrush to justify Id cards is stupid or dishonest.
It really isn't either stupid or dishonest. A basic universal ID card that was linked to immigration/right to work records and maybe passports and updated correctly would have avoided the Windrush problem. A social security/National insurance number type system would work for that. A sort of ID/right to live, work, apply for passport and collect benefits card. This is pretty much how a social security number works in the US.

That does not mean that any more information than that should be added to that database or system, or that records of access/use of that card are needed.
So what you want is a refinement of the National Insurance number database. But your inner milk-monitor just loves "id-cards".

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by IvanV » Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:23 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:03 pm
On the population registers it does seem that this is an issue where there does seem to be a profound difference in political culture between the UK and US on one hand and most of Europe on the other.

Population registers are run centrally or at the municipal level in the great majority of EEA states and in my experience they are not controversial. Certainly they could be misused or hacked, but then there are also benefits. I remember during the Brexit debates having to explain to incredulous Europeans and that the UK didn't know how many people were lawfully resident, and it had to organize a Roman style census every decade to find out.
This is why I don't believe the civil liberties argument against ID cards, and that people making such arguments must have another real reason. It is an obvious and straightforward observation that lots of countries with good civil liberties have ID cards. Clearly ID cards can be abused, as they are in various less good countries, but this is not an argument against having them unless you believe we are such a less good country. In fact there is even a concept of ID discrimination in such countries - you disenfranchise sub-populations by making it difficult for them to get the ID cards they need to have normal function in the country.

The Blair ID card project was being sold on various ideas that standard ID cards didn't provide, and which made it difficult and expensive to implement. It wasn't a standard good EU country ID card project. It isn't an argument against a standard ID card project.

Thanks for splitting the thread BTW

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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by TopBadger » Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:34 pm

bob sterman wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:39 pm


Here's what the 2006 Identity Cards act said...
The following may be recorded in the entry in the Register for an individual—

(a)particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual's entry has been provided to a person;

(b)particulars of every person to whom such information has been provided on such an occasion;

(c)other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information.
Notice it didn't say "an occasion" - it said "every occasion".
And?

Looking at this through the lens of GDPR, where individuals have the right to a subject access request so you can understand what your data is used for and who by - these are entirely the clauses you'd need to support that. You'd be able to know that your GP checked your existence on the register as part of their enrollment process, etc. And you'd need every check to be logged.

Now - Labour overreached with their ID Cards scheme, they really didn't need biometrics, but a system striped back to the essentials only should be of little concern to anyone.

We already have the legal requirement to keep the government up to date with address changes... see drivers licenses. If you have a job HMRC know where you live for tax purposes. Credit agencies are already tracking you very closely. And if you have a cell phone, the government know where you are to a few 100 ft.
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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by discovolante » Mon Mar 13, 2023 2:19 pm

nekomatic wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 8:02 am
My point was that if someone claims asylum here, they are not trying to disappear from the authorities and get by living and working without official ID. They are literally appearing to the authorities and, as it happens, signing up for one of the ID cards which apparently we don’t have, so that they can live and work legally.

Of course some may claim that nobody arriving in a small boat wants to claim asylum until they get intercepted and need some way of trying to avoid getting removed, but if true then it is weird how many of them were well advised to do so as their asylum claims are accepted by the notoriously (checks notes) lenient Home Office.

It’s slightly tedious to have to go through this again but the objection to the Labour ID scheme, from me and many others anyway, was not that it might provide me with a convenient card to prove my identity, but that it set up a compulsory national biometric ID database which it was planned would then be used to identify people by their biometrics. This would have been hugely expensive and many experts at the time said it wouldn’t work, although with the passage of time and the advancement of technology China seems to be making good progress in developing similar ideas.
I'm having trouble parsing your second paragraph, which I'm sure is my fault, but anecdotally it's not that uncommon to not claim asylum precisely because of how risky it is that you'll be sent back by the home office if you do, even if you have entirely 'legitimate' reasons for being in the UK/leaving your home country. Or at least that was the case a while back.
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Re: ID cards and migrant motivations

Post by noggins » Mon Mar 13, 2023 2:34 pm

IvanV wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:23 pm
This is why I don't believe the civil liberties argument against ID cards, and that people making such arguments must have another real reason. It is an obvious and straightforward observation that lots of countries with good civil liberties have ID cards. Clearly ID cards can be abused, as they are in various less good countries, but this is not an argument against having them unless you believe we are such a less good country. In fact there is even a concept of ID discrimination in such countries - you disenfranchise sub-populations by making it difficult for them to get the ID cards they need to have normal function in the country.

The Blair ID card project was being sold on various ideas that standard ID cards didn't provide, and which made it difficult and expensive to implement. It wasn't a standard good EU country ID card project. It isn't an argument against a standard ID card project.

Thanks for splitting the thread BTW

Well, I believe that, given the (pleasantly) socially liberal, educated, littlebitlefty tilt of this board, that anyone here in favour of "Id cards" is either indulging their inner trainspotter, or just being a contrarian tit.

There are arguments in favour of a trying to make a "better" UK National Identity Register: make them if you like, but "Id cards" is just arse gas.

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