Rep. Opsommer, having reserved the right to explain his nay vote, made the following statement:
“Mr. Speaker and members of the House:
This bill is being sold as only doing one thing: making Michigan’s drivers licenses acceptable for border crossings with Canada and Mexico. If that is all it did, it would be a very good bill. Improved border security is needed.
But this bill has very little to do with security, and actually puts security in a back seat to technology. Under this bill it is not enough to simply prove you are a citizen. It says that you have to prove your citizenship via RFID. That is beyond outrageous, that you can not gain re-entry into your own country unless you are willing to accept RFID enabled ID. It is also dangerous, as border agents may decide to let whole busloads into the country based not on talking to each person and verifying who they are, but by trusting who an electronic transponder tells them is on a bus.
This bill is also deceptive, and does NOT make it so that you don’t need a passport to cross the border. It instead turns our driver’s licenses into a passport. This is an important distinction. It’s not an enhanced driver’s license. It is now a passport that allows you to drive.
You’ll still need a passport to cross the border, only now your passport will also act as a drivers license. State and federal documents have been merged. Why should this concern us? Because once our driver’s license becomes more than just proof of citizenship, and becomes a full blown passport, they have to meet international passport rules. The reason why these licenses have to contain RFID is because of the initiatives of two groups. The first is the United Nations agency known as the International Civil Aviation Organization. The second is the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which is a movement by the United States, Mexico, and Canada to expand upon NAFTA without congressional oversight.
The fact that we have to use RFID in what used to be our sovereign Michigan licenses because of the influences of the United Nations and NAFTA should be alarming to everyone. Make no mistake, these enhanced licenses are no longer ours, no matter what they say across the top. I have tried for months to allow Michigan to create an enhanced drivers license that has the same background checks we need but that does not require RFID. It has become painfully obvious to me over that time that Michigan no longer has any say in crafting what these IDs must contain. It is a take it or leave it proposition that uses our border economy as blackmail to get what they want.
What will be next? With these organizations pushing for passports that contain fingerprints and iris patterns, what else will we be forced to accept them doing to our licenses? If the United Nations, NAFTA, or SPP requires more than just RFID in licenses, we will have to give it to them or the licenses will become null and void. Full fingerprinting, iris scans, and DNA of all U.S. citizens, to be shared with other countries and international 501c3 organizations that have no Constitutional jurisdiction over us? The very idea seems beyond being possible, and yet here we have allowed the first domino to fall with barely a whimper.
If you are against the expansion of NAFTA without Congressional oversight, today’s passage of HB 5535 should be a cause for alarm.
If you are opposed to the influences of the United Nations trickling down into our driver’s licenses, HB 5535 should be a cause for alarm.
If you are against turning our driver’s licenses into devices that can be used to track the American people, if you are a federalist, or if you believe in the Constitution, this bill should be a call for alarm.
I emphatically vote no.”