NO2ID

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpag ... enDocument

ID cards for foreigners from 25 November
1 September 2008

The UK Border Agency has given a start date to compulsory identity cards, for foreign nationals applying to stay in the country as students or through marriage.

...

Philippe Martin, a senior analyst at Kable, said that non-EEA nationals already need a visa to work or study, and the card will work in the same way. "It's just a renaming," he said of the move. "Now they have a visa, and in future they will have an identity card."

...

Eh bien, Philippe, c'est bien possible, mais je vous trouve peu rassurant quand-meme ... or, in anglo-saxon, "pull the other one, Phil, it's got bells on!"

How are they going to check that the ID's real, that it belongs to the person who presents it ?

How is it going to stop the majority of people working in the grey economy, for unscrupulous bosses who prefer their workers to have a dodgy visa because then they can exploit them even more ?

This is a trial for the full roll-out of ID cards, and if we don't stand up to this then the No2ID campaign is as good as lost.

I would have thought there will soon be a mass exodus of "foreigners" leaving the UK due to poverty, rising inflation, unemployment and rising costs. Oh and the feeling of intimidation through having been singled out to have an ID card.

If it is, then it isn't a very good one. The National Identity Register does not yet exist and there is no infrastructure across the country for verifying identities against it (only 6 offices!). Nor are the recipients likely to have existing records on other UK databases, so it doesn't test any of the record linkage that is such a central feature of the NIR.

In this case I think the chap from Kable is probably right. These are just plastic visas so the Home Office can say that it has started issuing ID cards. Apart from the material, how will these cards differ to the biometric visas that are already issued?

So as they are forged it will mean a rise in illegal immigration because officials will think they are somehow more secure, because they are made of plastic and of the dimensions of a credit card. What they call the 'gold standard', to use current government parlance. Remember there is an election coming up and I can already hear the words "successful introduction of ID cards".

This is a Government stunt to 'divide and rule'. To pander to the ignorant culture of 'them and us' and present their iniquitous ID project as a fait accompli.

We must be ready to publicise our opposition to it. In fact I'm going to try to get a letter published in my local paper about this soon, rather than wait until the date arrives.

Does anyone know why the 25th November has been chosen as the start date?

Does this date have some significance, or has it just been 'plucked out of the air'?

Remember, remember, the twenty-fifth of November...

(couldn't resist)

Kable's man is right. This is propaganda by action for the ID system as a whole by reconfiguring the visas that some foreign residents (the ones least likely to make a fuss and having the strongest motives for coming here, note). What they will get is an ID card within the meaning of the Identity Cards Act, but it and the accompanying obligations are imposed on them under the UK Borders Act, not the Identity Cards Act.

No National Identity Register yet exists, and none of this does anything to change the status of those not subject to immigration control, though it is possible the Home Office will rattle out some Statutory Instruments identfiying the register of such visas as forming part on the Register.

What needs to be watched very closely is the impending attempt to extend the scope of the Identity Cards Act and the conception of identity as exclusively conferred by official documents through "Immigration" legislation that applies to everyone - and getting rid of the distinction.

There is an increase on the data being held on these people. For instance some universties are implenting file storage systems to collate this data for reporting requriements that UKBA are enforcing as part of their requirements of a being a sponsor.

Staff are going to be trained on how to visually check the ID cards, whereas at the moment they check passports.

Personally i'm putting forward a motion to my branch of Unite about it, as they represent University support staff who will be involved in verfying IDs and reporting changes in circumstances to the UKBA.

Yes; there are massively increased data-collection and -sharing powers in the UK Borders Act. It is certainly part of the same mass-surveillance trend and apparatus.

Your university and union should be made aware of UK Borders Act, s8 which provides for the Home Office to produce regulations to do whatever it likes with that information.

That's why the issue of ID cards for foreign nationals divides No2ID supporters. I worry that many tories and some other supporters will not be particularly concerned if this is a side-effect of the new scheme.

Even if some people are not concerend about foreign Nationals having ID cards, they should still worry that it's just a way of trialling the scheme for use on them.

Absolutely. Non-EU foreign nationals are a "soft target" i.e. they are seen by the Government as a means of introducing ID cards without encountering too much opposition from the population as a whole. With the thin edge of the wedge in place it's easier to thicken it. As Guy has pointed out this is a propaganda exercise and the reconfiguration is unnecessary except if the objective is to get the National Identity Scheme off the ground.

Well it would if we were less well organised and sensible about it. People love to analyse things in black and white, and they might say something like NO2ID supports unregulated immigration by reason that they are against ID cards for foreigners attempting to take up permanent residence in this country. That's why it should be made clear that people who support NO2ID are individuals and have their own opinions on a wide range of issues. In other words they are not like a cult, they are individuals with their own identity. Indeed the way the gullible fall into following someone else is the primary reason we are in such a mess, where the few can control the many. Lots of people have tried to tag us as this or that but every time it just fails to stick. That forces them to be required to argue these cards on reasonable grounds, something else that just can't be done.

The one thing though that does seem to be common is that most on here can see that ID cards will not solve the immigration problem, not in the least since the government has been on record many times stating that they want more of it and not less. Gordon Brown has been one of these people. So really it’s not a problem for us, it’s a problem for the government and their prevailing hypocrisy. Indeed it is more than that, it’s an insult to people to be told this by the government.

What 'problem'. It is this kind of statement that has led to No2ID's tactical failure to recognise that social control inside and between national border are art of the same thing.

One reason for obsession in British anti-ID campaign of maintaining the viewpoint that ID cards and immigration control should be considered as seperate issues must be that the British state (and Ireland's) is not part of EU Schengen area. Now Switzerland has joined,
http://www.euroskop.cz/8377/2074/clanek ... 14-august/
and Macedonia has just allowed entry with ID only (for Schengen countries) http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/3778/2/
the dividing line between national ID and border control continues to blur.

Indeed! Take the day off on 25th November and get down to the nearest issuing office to protest!

Any idea of what and where the offices are? Anybody got the addresses?

Almost certainly these: http://www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/contac ... page/peos/

Yep those are the addresses, nice to see that non-EAA students etc won't have far to travel for the privelege