AIBU to think that Digital ID will not stop illegal immigration, and nor is it a good idea?

It won’t though. As others have mentioned on this thread, countries with ID cards already still have large black market economies. The U.K. also already has stringent Right to Work checks and penalties for not following them. If there are companies ignoring those laws what makes you think they will follow laws about people haven’t to show digital ID cards?

And how would having to “present” ID cards work? This would probably look like the police identifying and targeting businesses known for hiring illegal workers. But there’s zero reason they can’t do this now. They don’t need ID cards. If companies can’t evidence that they’ve done right to work checks, they can face huge fines. But to my knowledge they haven’t been doing targeted work to do this. And if not, why not? And why bring in ID cards instead which will cost a fortune and do little to nothing to achieve your goal? Maybe it might just be because it’s got nothing to do with immigration at all….

Could somebody who lives in a country where you can't do anything without showing your ID card tell me what happens if you lose it or it is stolen?

Any laughably ironically, the UK economy would probably collapse without the extra workers.

Lisa Nandy said this morning on BBC :

”if people are challenged, they will need to show a digital ID to show their right to work here - but adds that the digital ID won’t need to be shown to get benefits or access the NHS”.

It plainly won’t stop people arriving in boats.

It is an incredibly muddled policy idea. Also, it could be used in countless sinister ways by a far right government in future.

Frankly, Starner is an idiot. And one thing that Andy Burnham got right is that he does not have a coherent vision or set of policies, or if he does, he doesn’t think it’s worth sharing with us. It’s drip, drip of new ideas from behind a closed hand. I’m sick of him.

Why would the UK get a reputation as too difficult to get work in? The people who are already working illegally are by definition doing so in roles that don't require legal presence. The introduction of another type of ID requirement doesn't affect that. Demand for low paid illegal labour won't stop.

But if the UK gets a reputation for being too difficult to get work in then maybe it’s not worth paying a thousand pounds to cross the channel, so that in the future people stop arriving. The problem is that we have more arrivals that we have infrastructure to deal with.

But surely illegal migrants will just continue to work on the black market as they’ve always done , cash ,cheap labour.

How will this solve the problem? When people arrive here illegally they are already here.

The numbers on this are going up fast!

Good shout. An extract from an article on what Palantir are up to in the US below.....interesting parallels and possible reason for sudden push for ID scheme.....

"In JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a “palantír” is a seeing stone that can be used to distort truth and present selective visions of reality. During the War of the Ring, a palantír falls under the control of Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive.

Palantir Technologies bears a striking similarity. It sells an AI-based platform that allows its users – among them, military and law enforcement agencies – to analyze personal data, including social media profiles, personal information and physical characteristics. These are used to identify and surveil individuals.

In March, Trump signed an executive order requiring all agencies and departments of the federal government to share data on Americans. To get the job done, Trump chose Palantir Technologies.

According to New York Times reporting, Palantir’s software may now be used to combine data gleaned from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, the administration wants access to citizens’ and others’ bank account numbers and medical claims."

Full article....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/30/peter-thiel-palantir-threat-to-americans Archive link: https://archive.ph/g5MQ0

Palantir cosying up to labour:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23746831.palantir-babock-among-contentious-sponsors-labour-conference/ Archive link: https://archive.ph/7X5Ag

Labour announce £750 million dollar deal (and there's been other large deals in the last few years with them).

https://www.thenational.scot/news/25478709.labour-slammed-750m-mod-deal-idf-linked-tech-giant-palantir/ Archive link: https://archive.ph/fZe7X

The company's business model seems to include deep integration with its clients, with employees often embedding within government agencies to develop new use cases for its software, such as seen in Palantir's Falcon platform used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)*

*Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/22/ice-palantir-data - Archive link: https://archive.ph/MZey2

Yay, huge companies and far-right billionaires integrating with the government and having access to our data. Not worrying at all if that's the plan.

Yes at a time when the country is skint, services are on their knees, and they are trying to increase taxes and cut spending, this seems a complete waste of taxpayer's money.

Yes at a time when the country is skint, services are on their knees, and they are trying to increase taxes and cut spending, this seems a complete waste of taxpayer's money.

“Illegal immigration” is just an excuse to introduce digital IDs. What they want - is total control over population. Digital slavery. No privacy. No rights.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194

So if I asked you for your phone and your passcode, so I could have a nosey around read your emails and messages and notes and calendar, and stuck a tracker on your car so I could see where you were going all the time and kept a log of it, and sat and looked over your shoulder while your surfed the net to watch everything you were doing and made a note of that too and kept it, you wouldn't care? I'm not talking about stalking, just me, a stranger, who just fancies having a gander at all your stuff.

I'd find that surprising but maybe you wouldn't? If you would though, why would you care about me knowing all your personal and sometimes intimate details and information, but you don't care about the PEOPLE at Google, or Meta, or in the government knowing it all.. People run and work in those organisations, people review that data, people have access to the data (either legitimately or maliciously). And these organisations, who are engaging in mass surveillance, can do many more nefarious things with your data that I can as an individual.

At the moment. And Denmark are a very anti-privacy country - they are the ones who have proposed and are pushing Chat Control. It's also interesting that on SM lots of Danes are complaining that this has been hushed by the press, and that it's not being reported on. Not a model I would want to be mirroring.

Even if they did it for NHS appointments how many would be wasted because someone forgot their ID, or their phone died, or they couldn't get it to work? Plus the impact that would then have on the health of a poorly nation - look what delays and cancelled appts did to people during covid - people died, and people who are a little bit sick, get sicker and become harder and more costly to treat.

Whay do you think the purpose if a digital I.D is?

This should be good . . .

It predates Gerry Adams by quite some time

Every single account you have will be linked to this I.D.

Thats the real reason. To make surveillance easier. The government will be able to track you to a degree that would have made the KGB wet themselves.

But people are just too stupid to understand.

Anyone who supports the idea of a Government mandated digital I.d is a naive idiot.

Us in 2030...Oh how we laughed at the idea of being chipped...

🙄

Thise migrants queue up to be registered, they want to be "picked up" and go out of their way to make their presknown to the authorities.

I live in a country with ID cards. You cannot get benefits or welfare without one so it cuts down the fraud. It's also very convenient to have one

Can you imagine the pious outcry on MN if any illegal immigrant was denied NHS treatment because they lacked the ID card?

There’d be endless emotional threads about the cruelty and unfairness of it, and the infringement on their human rights - which makes a mockery of the whole idea from the get go! Those so keen on the idea now will be the first to find excuses and seek special treatment for those who don’t abide by the rules, should they come to fruition.

This.

It's probably long overdue tbh.

Brilliant post.