[Originally published at Corrente.]

The Immigration Bill is a real piece of work, entirely worthy of the malAdministration. I know Broderella says Teh Bipartisan is awsum, but:

The American Civil Liberties Union today expressed grave concerns about the due process and privacy implications of the Senate immigration bill.
The proposed legislation would create a vast federal database to verify the work eligibility of all job applicants in America - including U.S. citizens; expand indefinite detention; and deny effective judicial review of Department of Homeland Security errors denying immigration status.

As I was writing another diary about the Kennedy-Kyl immigration bill I suddenly realized that it may contain a huge Trojan Horse.

One of the provisions requires that employer verify employment eligibility electronically before an employee starts a job. That immediately brought up some concerns about privacy and identity theft. Another concern is just plain database errors in such a huge system. Will an individual have a way to correct an incorrect listing? What happens when somebody gets accidentally deleted?

And then I remembered fellow Kosack Jesselyn Radack and her story of being blacklisted for her private-sector job.

What if BushCo was considering to use this system not just to verify the right to work, but also to deny it?

Am I in tinfoil territory here? Or is the situation so bad that such a thing is even thinkable?

Yesterday morning I read an AP story, "Senate Votes to Double Employer Fines for Illegal Immigrants," which included this:

Employers who don't use the new computerized system could be fined $200 to $600. The system would include information from the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and Homeland Security Department.

"What 'new computerized system?'" I asked myself. The article didn't explain, so I tried to find out for myself. The new system, it turns out, is the Employment Eligibility Verification System, which is intended, in part, to "respond to all inquiries ... on whether individuals are authorized to be employed and to register all times when such inquiries are not received."

At which point I asked myself, "Am I overreating, or have the neocons moved one step closer to their Big Brother dream of tracking and storing every move we make?"

More below the fold.