By now we're all familiar with the no-fly list. You get on it, somehow, or you just have a name similiar to to someone on it (lord help you if your name is something Islamic) and you can't fly anymore. You weren't put on it because you ever comitted a crime. You can't face your accuser, or even know who the accuser is, and once on it, you can't get off it and have no right of appeal to the court system.

The immigration bill does something similiar - it creates what amounts to a "no work list".

US citizens who apply for a job will need prior approval from Department of Homeland Security under the terms immigration bill passed by the Senate this week.

American Civil Liberties Union pointed out that the DHS's Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) is error plagued and if the department makes a mistake in determining work eligibility, there will be virtually no way to challenge the error or recover lost wages due to the bill's prohibitions on judicial review.

Even current employees will need to obtain eligibility approval from the DHS Within 60 days of the Immigration Reform Act of 2006 becoming law.

It's deeply offensive to anyone who believes in due process that Congress and the President keep doing run-arounds around the court system - declaring that departments can punish citizens, confinscate their property or take away their rights without them ever having their day in court. This hasn't just been the case with tne no-fly list - the war on drugs saw police given the ability to seize property without convicting suspects of a crime, for example and Congress has tried to stop the courts from reviewing the legality of Guantanmo detainments by stripping courts of their habeas rights and of jurisciction, as well as declaring that courts can't determine legality, but only if administrative rules have been fairly applied.

This is very similiar and it should frighten any right-thinking American. Even if you believe in this sort of system, the idea that the Department of Homeland Security, a notably incompetent department, is in any shape to administer it is laughable.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike the immigration bill - the guest worker provisions; the touch back provision; the "must keep working" provision for those on track for citizenship, which puts them at the mercy of their employers - but the "no work list" provision should, by itself, be enough to make anyone with any sense want the bill to die.

Immigration "reform" boosters say that what is being gotten from the bill is worth the cost. I disagree - the status quo sucks, but a bad bill will be with the US for a long time. Wait till 2009, when you hopefully have a stronger majority and a Democrat in the White House and pass a bill that doesn't destroy civil rights, add guest workers or have provisions that undermine the path to citizenship that boosters claim is the best part of the bill.

And above all - don't pass yet another bill that has a provision in it that strips the courts of jurisdiction and allows people to be punished by the administrative fiat of a notoriously incompetent, corrupt and politically partisan Homeland Security department. Enough with the idea that Americans can have their rights - whether to fly, or to work, stripped from them without ever having their day in court and without their accuser ever having to face them in the cold hard light of day.

Congress should be ashamed of itself for even suggesting a "no work list", and no one should support this bill till it is removed from it.