By Chad Groening and Pat Centner
March 10, 2003

(AgapePress) - Michelle Malkin, syndicated columnist and immigration reform activist, says she supports a bill that would prevent federal entities from accepting bogus ID cards issued by foreign consulates. Malkin says state and local governments, as well as banking institutions, are now accepting Mexican consular cards as official identification for illegal aliens.

The cards, which are the hottest item now available at Mexican consuls in the United States, are an "official" Mexican identification card granted by the Mexican government to Mexicans living in this country. There is a catch, though.

Although the card can be accepted in lieu of a Mexican passport when returning to Mexico, it is not a Mexican passport. A Mexican passport is granted in Mexico to Mexicans planning to travel outside that country. Mexicans who travel legally to the U.S. get a passport before they leave Mexico. Therefore, they have an ID when they arrive here.

Those who apply for consular cards, however, are already in the U.S. -- without proper identification.

According to a recent article in the Las Vegas Sun, about 23,000 people have applied for cards in Nevada the past year. Prior to the consulate's opening in Las Vegas in February of 2002, most of those people had no means for proving their identities to banks and police. Nationwide, 1.5 million Mexicans have applied for cards the past year.

Because of the success of the Mexican consular cards, other countries like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Poland are now considering issuing similar cards.

"It already has opened a Pandora's Box," says Malkin. "All of those other countries are trying to ID their people as well. Now, one argument you get from the Mexican government is that 'well, this does not really change their status; they are still illegal.' But of course it changes their status. That's the whole reason why they want [the use of] this card to spread in the first place because it is a form of self-amnesty -- of regularizing the existence of people who don't belong here in the first place."

Apart from the fact that the people using the cards are in this country illegally, Malkin says there is another very important reason why the cards should not be accepted.

One of the uses for this card is for people to be able to board planes. "Gee, I wonder why people should be worrying about illegal aliens boarding planes?" Malkin asks. "And yet, you have cases where you've got twenty, thirty illegal aliens on a plane who all have this bogus ID. And you know, this could just as easily be people from Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Pakistan possessing that fake document as well."

Tom Tancredo, U.S. Congressman from Colorado, has introduced legislation that would prevent federal government agencies from accepting the bogus cards.

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