This puts us in such "illustrious" company as countries like Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Botswana and of course North Korea.

As a friend told me recently:

"If the Bahamas would like inspiration from a country renowned for its human rights:

"North Korea is probably the country which imposes the strongest fines for citizens not carrying ID cards. To travel North Koreans need not only an identity card, but also a "travel pass", with specified destination and written permission. Sometimes citizens may be punished with time in a labour camp for not carrying their cards, however this is often only a short sentence and people are usually released upon presentation of the card at a later date. "

The problem the country faces with immigration is with illegal migrants, not those authorised to be here and obviously not Bahamians.

This begs another question. How do we deal with the millions of tourists that visit our shores. Are we going to pick them up indiscriminately as well?

Beside the civil rights/liberties issues with a policy like this, we certainly do not need yet another government bureaucracy to cost the taxpayer more money and time.

Lately it seems there is no bad public policy idea that is out of favour. This is another one that should be placed on the scrap heap with the bad ideas that have gone before.

Should citizens and residents have to fear that government agents will be stopping them at random without reason or provocation?

In Police states, like most of those mentioned above, citizen's rights are slowly turned into priviledges for the political elites and their buddies. Bahamains should be very wary of a national identification card. It's a tool for over reaching governments around the globe.