Mexico approves biometric ID card to help ‘address demographic changes’

[Stone]

Mexico approves biometric ID card to help ‘address demographic changes’
A new General Population Law enables a government database that has Mexicans' personal data, including an individual's unique physical characteristics.

December 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Mexico passed a New General Population Law that aims for the creation of a “Unique Digital Identity Card” and to “enable the government to address demographic changes, mortality, fertility, and international migration.”

The new General Law on Population, Human Mobility and Interculturality, passed by the Chamber of Deputies in Mexico with 426 votes in favor, three abstentions, and one against, “will enable the Ministry of the Interior to create a database with the personal data of Mexicans, including biometrics,” reported Forbes Mexico.

The Cédula Única de Identidad Digital (Unique Digital Identity Card) is to become “the official identification document for all Mexicans,” and will be issued to those in Mexico and also to those living abroad, according to BiometricUpdate.com.

The card will contain citizens’ “names, surnames, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, and biometric data, together with a unique Population Registration Key (CURP) number.”

The stated purpose of the identity card is not just to “guarantee the right to identity,” but to “address” demographic changes.
The identity card “will enable the government to address demographic changes, mortality, fertility, and international migration,” according to Representative César Agustín Fernández Pérez (Morena).

The Yucatan Times reported, “In a bulletin published online, the Chamber of Deputies stated that the new General Population Law aims to “establish the bases for inter-institutional coordination to formulate and conduct population and intercultural policy that addresses the causes and consequences of demographic dynamics and guarantees the right to identity.”

Mexico’s previous General Population Law, created in 1974 and last reformed in 2014, provides for the execution of “measures required” for family planning programs through “education and public health services,” “with the purpose of rationally regulating and stabilizing the growth of population.”

The new General Population Law requires the National Population Registry to “contain the certificate number of disability, when applicable, and “self-inscription as a member of the indigenous peoples or Afro-Mexican population.”

[Emphasis mine.]