Certainly this can be done. It's a question of will. Is there the political will to do it? A national "work" & or benefit card does not have to be intrusive. It doesnt' even have to cover everyone. It only has to cover people who are working. It is already a law that they must file and pay into a national fund that is tracked. I send the prospective or current SS # in to the SS office and they cannot or will not tell me if the person attached to it is legal or not. To stipulate that this is a larger issue than stemming the tide of illegal imigrants is disinguine. All laws are infringments on personal freedom. New ones should not be made lightly. But to insist that we cannot save ourselves from an invasion of illegal imigrants because it is against our principles to put into place a reliable method of checking is simply dishonest. This can and should be done and it doesn't have to be in the form of an ID card. The system is in place right now, if the state wishes to actually use it, that could identify 90% of the violators. Right now they don't want to look. When they decide they do want to look at the data that they themselves have already collected the letters can and will go out immediately.