Why those tamper-proof IDs won't work

Bush proposes to issue the ID cards just to foreign workers, no doubt to reassure Americans who oppose any hint of a national identity card. Yet it didn't take much thought to realize that tamper-proof ID cards for non-citizen workers won't work, because they would create a whole new problem, in that now every other citizen would be without proof of legality — short of carrying around a passport, I guess.

So it would have to be all or nothing, apparently.

I have no problem with the concept of a voluntary national tamper-proof ID card — voluntary in the sense that you could choose whether to have it at all, like a passport; you could use it to ease the way to employment (as Social Security numbers used to do), to board an aircraft, to cash a check, etc.

Or you could choose to have one and then choose not to carry it or to only use it sometimes. You would not be required to have it with you at all, and no one could demand you produce it -- it would just be useful, like a passport.

Maybe that's a solution.