I think the documentation requirements vary by state and some are more stringent than others.
Agreed.
ISTM some states are in effect sabotaging the Fed’s “Lets screw the immigrants and poor people” subtext by granting RealIDs on what is rather flimsy backing.
I got mine about a month ago. I needed to show my birth certificate (which entailed going back to the county where I was born to get a copy, since I didn’t have one). An unexpired passport would have worked as well, but I don’t have one, and getting my birth certificate was easier. I also needed to show documentation of my social security number.
I just went to see if I could get mine in NJ, but there are zero appointments available statewide. An appointment briefly opened up, about 2.5 hours from me, and then was quickly snapped up.
I have my passport, so I’m fine. But, it doesn’t look like I’m getting a RealID by the deadline.
These are questions i can’t answer. I mean about me, not about you. I don’t have a good memory for numbers. What did i pay on my auto loan? Damned if i know. Can i recite a recent transaction on my HSA card? Nope. Where did i get my mortgage? Some mortgage broker that sold the loan the next day. What were they called? Dunno. The loan eventually went to some West Coast Bank that went bankrupt, but i don’t recall it’s name, either.
I’m screwed.
I think they understand that people don’t remember this stuff precisely.
When I’ve had to answer similar identity questions it’s more like “Which of these 4 cars did you once own?: 1997 Kia, 2005 Jeep, 2010 Toyota, 2020 Mercedes, or I never owned any of those”.
Or “which city did you once live in?” with 4 choices and a none of the above. Or “which street name did you once live on?”
Because I’ve owned a few registered businesses I’ve gotten similar questions about which business name was I once affiliated with.
What I have never gotten is “how much was your car payment?” or “Who was your mortgage with?”
Punchline being those are all questions whose answers are fairly memorable.
My bank has asked me to give them a recent transaction to prove my identity. And when i lost my wallet and needed to replace everything in it, the hardest item turned out to be my HSA-linked debit card, because they wanted me to tell them a recent transaction on it. And… I honestly didn’t even remember which medical fees I’d paid with it and which I’d just paid with my credit card, let alone who the payment was to (names of medical groups are often dissimilar from the name you write in your calendar) or exactly how much it was. Because i could do that, i had trouble even convincing them to cancel the existing card.
I use the credit cards a lot more, could log into the app (good enough to demonstrate my identity) and that was enough for them to cancel the cards and mail new ones to my home address on their records. The credit cards were cancelled half an hour after i lost the wallet, and one of the new ones made it home before i did, the other a day later.
I didn’t go into a lot of detail ( maybe not enough) but they weren’t open ended questions - it was multiple choice with say four banks named for the mortgage and multiple brackets for the car payment , maybe 400-600 or 900-12000
And there weren’t just two questions- those were just the first two I remembered. I’m sure I also got a question about addresses and which car I owned and I don’t know what else.
Probably a good idea to renew your passport if you’ll ever be in Canada because if you drive to Canookland using enhanced DL but need to fly back to the States in an emergency you’ll need a passport to fly home.
remember: neither EDLs nor passport cards can be used for international air travel, even emergency flights home from Canada or Mexico.
From here. I could not easily find this info from a more authoritative site (e.g. US Dept. of State) so my cite is third-party.
So, green card aliens can not fly?
I would suspect that many non-citizens with green cards who are living in the U.S. are already using passports – from their home countries – as ID at TSA checkpoints.
Sure, but the real idea of Real ID was so undocumented aliens can’t fly.
Which has nothing to do with “green card aliens,” who are, by definition, not undocumented.
That is what I said “sure”.
I’m not sure what you were trying to argue or point out here. You said, in response to:
Why did you bring them up here, if your point was that:
Totally agree. . at that time, the state where I was living was having all sorts of problems instituting the new program, and had a very significant backlog and there were horror stories of people going in for renewals or to obtain the new Real ID and not having the correct papers, or documents and having to return and start all over again the next day. . .Usually after having to stand in line for several hours. (It was worse than standing in line for the original Star Wars after the word got out)
Apparently in some locations it has only gotten marginally better. As it turned out, a good longtime friend made some calls and came by and grabbed me and we went to a local tag agent, and were in and out in about 20 to 30 minutes.
I meant NON green card aliens cant fly. My mistake.
No worries – thank you for the clarification!
Another Enhanced Driver’s License holder here, since they’re available in Minnesota due to its proximity to Canada. I just got a new one (the old one merely expired), my second EDL. My first card from four years ago only had the American flag, but my new one has both the flag and the gold star. But when we travel, we usually just carry our passports anyway.