Rich, I pulled the idle jet on one of my carbs, and yep, there was the membrane. It also had a small hole in it from when I drilled the jet. It doesn't seem to affect the idle, as I was saying, I let it idle for 40-50 minutes while I lapped in the clutch and it never missed a beat.
The hole in the membrane was very small, in fact I couldn't see a distinct hole. Perhaps when I pushed through the membrane it wasn't cut but simply pushed through and then closed back up without removing any material.
The Zama engineers obviously know a lot more about that circuit and decided to install the membrane. Perhaps when we drill the idle jet we just need to be careful about pushing through when that last bit of the brass jet gets drilled out.