The Home Office has made a formal request to parliament to increase the scope of ID cards for foreign nationals.
Under the proposed regulations, which are part of government plans, applicants under six categories for UK immigration will need to provide fingerprints and a photograph to be stored electronically on the card, the Home Office said on Thursday.
Until now, only students and foreign nationals applying to stay in the UK on the basis of marriage have been obliged to have the biometric cards. Now, those required to give their fingerprints to the police will include visitors representing overseas companies in the UK; those visiting for private medical treatment; domestic workers in private households; people with a Commonwealth passport; and people aged over 60 who are able to support themselves, plus their partners and children. At the moment, these groups need only to get a stamp or vignette in their passport.
Privacy campaigners questioned why these groups should be targeted by the authorities. Phil Booth, director of No2ID, said the government had "picked on" these people as they were "less able to defend themselves".
"They are a soft target," Booth told ZDNet UK. "The government has clearly picked on a group of people least likely to appeal. These people are coming to study and work, and contribute to our economy."
The government has consistently claimed that ID cards are necessary for national security. The Home Office on Thursday said that it considered these groups of foreign nationals a potential crime risk.
"ID cards help protect against identity fraud, illegal working and immigration, crime and terrorism, and those trying to abuse positions of trust," said a Home Office spokesperson. "Identity cards for foreign nationals give employers a simple, more secure way to prove a person's immigration status and eligibility to work in the UK."
Currently border control, the police and job centres do not have any card readers, despite government claims the cards will be used to check eligibility to live and work in the UK. The government has no timescale in place to roll out card readers, the spokesperson said.
"No-one can read the things," said Booth. "Current Home Office guidance is for people checking the cards to flick them to see if they're real. It's just farcical."
However, the Home Office said that police and border controllers could check fingerprints by scanning people's fingers on the spot. The spokesperson added that the biometric and personal details would be stored on the UK Borders Agency database, to be added to the National Identity Register when the permanent centralised database is set up.
The current National Identity Register is temporary. Technology contractor Thales won the four-year, £18m contract for the temporary database in August last year.
Talkback
: The Home Office on Thursday said that it
: considered these groups of foreign nationals
: a potential crime risk.
This is just bigotry ! Housemaids, Colonials and Grannies are being demonised, simply because the HO think the general public won't have a problem with the gross generalisation that they are inherently evil and that we need to be protected from them.
: "ID cards help protect against identity fraud,
The number of heavy hitters in the identity business who have mocked this assertion makes me surprised that they are still trotting this piece of nonsense out. The prevailing wisdom, and a line of impecable logic holds that the exact opposite is the truth. The NIR et al will in fact increase our risk of ID theft, not reduce it. The fact that there are no readers out there just makes this worse.
: illegal working
This one has also been soundly rubbished.
: and immigration,
Ditto
: crime and terrorism,
Ministers themselves have admitted that this is not true; yet still the HO trot it out as if repetition will somehow alter the facts.
Policy is Truth at work again.
: and those trying to abuse positions of trust,"
Not even sure what this means. Who is it that is in a "position of trust" that doesn't already have some form of specific identification for that trust role? Maybe the NUT needs to look out. Maybe teachers are now on Waqui Jaqui's radar. I'll bet her former colleagues will love her to bits for that one!
: said a Home Office spokesperson. "Identity
: cards for foreign nationals give employers
: a simple, more secure way to prove a person's
: immigration status and eligibility to work in
: the UK."
Simpler than a vignette in their passport?
Passport. A secure document with a visible, stamped photograph.
ID Card. A secure document with a visible, stamped photograph. Sure it's got a whole bunch of other info embedded on the chip or hived away on the (non existent) database, but there are no readers and even when there are any, employers won't have them.
... & of course the compulsory fee that comes with having to obtain a card has got nothing to do with it...
my partner is a foreign national, but has lived here (legally!) for many years, and contributed a lot through tax. Now she'll have to 'contribute' further with one of these pointless cards that can't be read anywhere, sinced they won't update her passport unless she coughs up even more cash!!
this is a joke, & the sooner the Gov't realise it the better!
What he said .. except that if it's a joke, then it's not a very funny one.
I do try desperately hard to laugh every time Ms. Smith comes up with yet another paranoid, bigoted, illogical rant (with toning and matching regulations), I really do, but I just can't. She is destroying centuries of hard won principles that protect us from the excesses of an over keen or ideologically blinded state. Even if, for some bizarre reason we can find it in our hearts to trust this bunch, we really can't rely on this being the worst case scenario.
Blind optimism is not a healthy way to assess the dangers inherent in new state powers.