Ok, my my parent’s foreign exchange student did some baby sitting at the church they attend and was written a check for the services rendered. She goes to the bank and tries to get it cashed. There they tell her she needs some identification. Now she is from Japan, so she has no lisence so she hands the teller her passport. Valid I.D accepted everywhere in the U.S as far as I know right?
Apparently not, the teller tells her she needs a drivers liscence to cash the check, and a passport isn’t valid ID. Is this teller on crack? Seems to me the drivers liscence was never intended to be ID, otherwise it would be called the Identification card and drivers certifcation, or some such nonesense. Drivers licenses are to show you have been granted the right to drive, not to prove you are who you are right? And apparently a federally and strictly regulated PICTURE ID is not accepted? Is the teller in the right, or is she a complete loon? Should the girl in question have asked to talk to a manager?
She needs to go back to the bank and deal with a manager. Passports are valid ID worldwide, and I’m thinking that the teller is assuming that, since virtually every customer uses a driver’s license, that’s the only ID that’s acceptable.
OTOH, many places that want an ID are going to have the “ID means driver’s license” mindset, and are just going to be confused by the passport. A substantial portion of the population has probably never seen one. It’s not a document we tend to automatically get and carry around in a country where we seldom have a use for it. If she’s high school age, she won’t have to use ID for proof of age to buy booze, but she may have to show proof of age somewhere else, and the person checking it knows where to look on the driver’s licenses.
Many state DMVs recognize that the driver’s license has assumed a secondary use as general ID, and will issue an ID which is not a driver’s license, but will be readily accepted because it comes from the expected agency. If your DMV does this, it might be a good idea for her to get one.
I’m going to point out that every state in the union requires institutions such as banks to accept more than just a driver’s license, since there is a significant number of people who can’t obtain a driver’s license due to disability. In major cities such as New York and Chicago there are many who simply never bother to get a license.
The teller has her head up her ass and the girl should have spoken to a manager, who presumably will be intelligent enough to understand that a passport is a valid ID.
The passport has English and Japanese, which I think is universal (English + language of native country), but I could be wrong.
Yeah, she has talked about obtaining a Missouri ID card, but she leaves at the end of June/Early July, and it takes 90 days to process an ID, according to the DMV anyhow. Missouri is pretty slow doing anything.
