ID card rollout begins

[Roland Perry]

In article <48DB91EF.9010705@pemble.net>, Matthew Pemble 
<matthew@pemble.net> writes
>How will they know that a non-EEA national is resident here (never mind 
>for more than 3 or 6 months), therefore should have a card and should 
>be carrying it?

They will need to make it a requirement of doing carious things.

Entering the country is an obvious one (but doesn't cater for their lack 
of checking that people have left again - something even the Homeland 
Security people gave up trying to automate after using it to partly 
justify getting all arriving foreigners' fingerprints).

Getting a job is clearly the latest "hurdle", and I suppose they can use 
a combination of the employer guessing someone's origins, but also the 
circumstances under which the NI number was issued (when the NI number 
turns up on the employer's monthly PAYE returns). Assuming the DSS have 
kept that information on file of course.

We can all have a jolly time speculating what the next hurdles might be, 
but I'm pretty sure that applying for benefits and registering with a GP 
were mentioned in the original news story earlier today (it's been 
revised quite heavily at some point, including adding some pictures of 
the cards).
-- 
Roland Perry