Voter I.D. laws are constitutional and needed

Anti-foreign bias [http://en.wikipedia.org...] is defined by Bryan Caplan as the "tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of interaction with foreigners". Basic principles of comparative advantage indicate that both parties always benefit from the opening of specialized trade relations, says Caplan; however, we often fall victim nevertheless to a xenophobic bias according to which the foreign "Other" is marginalized and excluded due to its inability to represent itself under some particular political identity (e.g., the "American"). Because of the in-grouping which comes necessarily from assigning rights and moral worth according to these identities, conflict is nearly inevitable. For every category of identity upon which the nation-state, in its birth-territory-state formulation, is founded, there is always necessarily some external identity to which the former must always maintain itself in relation (to demonstrate its own superiority) while nevertheless regarding it as an enemy to be fought and eliminated. This conflict can take many forms--the American and the foreigner--the white and the minority--the Christian and the Muslim--the democrat and the terrorist--the citizen and the non-citizen--the native and the immigrant. In the case of modern liberal democracy, the direct investiture of sovereign power in "the People" is nothing less than the newest and most frightening formulation of this exclusive operation. That so-called "human rights"--supposedly inseparable from man by his very nature--are ever only recognized when they assume the form of rights belonging to the citizen of a state is proof enough of this. Such is citizenship, then--the immediate abstract political category into which birth disappears immediately to secure the preservation of rights attributed, oddly, on the basis of that birth.No wonder we run into such a peculiar problem when confronted by figures like the illegal immigrant, then--or the refugee--or the stateless person. Breaking the identity between man and citizen--between pure birth and political nationality--these characters serve as interesting limit figures (which explains the torment undergone by nation-statists when confronted by this break between nativity and nationality, and the zeal they display in attempting either to "naturalize" them--that is, to "re-birth" them in order to preserve the identity between birth and nation--or to repatriate them in the form of deportation to whichever state with which they can claim identity). In the space of the illegal immigrant, the refugee, the stateless person--the space between exclusion (repatriation) and inclusion (naturalization)--lie those specific beings for whose creation the nation-state is responsible, but whose existence the very same political order cannot bear to tolerate (hence the need to include or exclude, rather than let be). Hence the bizarre aporia in statements lie "they are not citizens, and have no right to even be here". On the one hand, changing the identity of the "they", in the form of naturalization, permits residence. On the other hand, changing the "be here", in the form of repatriation, preserves the identity of the fictive political body.The impossible option, in this system, is being without proving one's belonging--that is, to reside here without being able to demonstrate one's citizenship. Such is the dilemma of the refugee, who, as part of a mass phenomenon, cannot be dealt with in the traditional ways, and must therefore be turned over to police power (often in the form of a series of camps). This is represented most precisely by Pro's title for them. They are not "human beings" or bearers of "rights", but also seem to be even less than non-citizens; reduced to nothing but bare, biological life, they are immediately turned over to sovereign power in the form of a threat to the national political body--they are immediately criminals (their very existence without assimilation in the political body is in fact a crime), or, to appropriate Pro's term, "illegals". Failing to "get with the program" by being neither expelled nor re-birthed, their subjection to state power is complete through the characterization of these already-criminals as rapists, murderers, gang members, drug traffickers, economic parasites, and, as the most immediate threat to the body of the People, political malcontents out to subvert American Democracy. This sentiment parades itself with pomp and circumstance in Pro's statement that "we cannot allow the fate of this Nation to be decided by a bunch of criminals who shouldn't even be in this country to begin with."I could talk about a few things in this debate--I could, for instance, debunk that immigrants are criminals by pointing to the five natives who are incarcerated for every one immigrant [http://www.nber.org...]. I could invoke evidence about how immigrants are not economic parasites, and actually do pay taxes [http://www.usatoday.com...][http://www.taxfoundation.org...][http://seattletimes.nwsource.com...]. I could submit some evidence that illegal immigrants probably aren't, either all or a majority, drug smugglers [http://www.policyalmanac.org...]. And yet, I think that all of these sidestep the fundamental political issue of the nation-state which in the first place permits arguments about national identity, rights, citizenship, the meaning of "American" and so on.So, no, I don't want voter ID laws. I don't want to cement further the fiction of an American body politic. I don't want to maintain the link between man and the citizen. I don't want to continue a system in which you have a division between the all-inclusive political People and the excluded mass of common "people" who have to be eliminated--as is the case of the "illegal"--to preserve and secure the People against existential threats. I'm tired of inclusion and exclusion, and of marginalizing, oppressing, and criminalizing people on the basis of some arbitrary notion of citizenship or other representable condition of belonging to a political body. And that's all Pro's really doing. All these voter IDs serve to do, really, is highlight and cement the division between the political body and the people of the excluded who, in service to an undivided, idealized American People, have to be in some way eliminated. If it cannot be done through inclusion in citizenship or exclusion by deportation, it is done through treatment as a criminal through disqualification from political participation precisely through the bringing to light of the illegals' lack of a badge of political belonging.Look. The system of exclusive fictions on which nation-states rest, and their mechanism, the inclusion of our birth--our very natural life--in the political order (in its false identity with the citizen, as the source of "human" rights, as the very ground of sovereignty and referent for state legitimacy), are just in every way divisive, destructive, and oppressive. A fortiori, laws designed to cement the operations of a system like that--a system in which, as instances of state power like the TSA, brutal zero-tolerance policies in schools, and the juridical green-light on strip searches demonstrates, even citizens themselves are immediately potential criminals who assume the form of a threat to the political body in which they are simultaneously included (as citizens) and excluded (as threats to the body of which they are nevertheless a part)--are unquestionably, categorically repugnant.I apologize to readers if this is perhaps less professional than other debates of mine. But, honestly, this identity politics stuff just makes me sick.