To follow up, it seems that there are two side issues:
illegal immigration and how we should/could/will stop it, and
once in, then what do we do.
These are side issues that can and have been debated in other threads. If California wants to let illegal immigrants drive on the highways and as a side effect, they can drive on vacation in Nevada, then that may or may not be a bad thing. The Nevada Legislature could or might or should or whatever decide to withdraw from the Drivers License Compact and then not accept CA licenses…or not.
But it has nothing to do with terrorism. And as been seen by the non-enforcement of the Real ID Act, neither does the Real ID Act.
Except for the fact it will not do that as anyone with a passport from anywhere can still get in. In other words, it is totally useless vs terrorists and its only real purpose was to screw over illegal aliens.
And that is part of the issue as I have discussed in other related threads – the Driver’s License, is a document that is supposed to prove that the person who signed that name and address showed him/herself competent to operate a motor vehicle. Not that you are a citizen, not that you are a taxpayer or a property owner… but over the second half of the 20th Century it was mission-creeped into a de-facto personal legal ID document for other purposes.
True. As mentioned before, it was more about data sharing and about forcing the states to adopt a common ID standard that would contain the data the Feds wanted gathered.
At the time, and even today, a very large part of the citizens of the US would have no such standardized ID document, instead having whatever Californa, Nevada, New York or Puerto Rico saw fit to issue by whatever standard they saw fit to issue (including what data they saw fit to gather and what they did with it).
And since there’s no way in Hell that you’d pass the creation of an actual single universal citizen/resident ID document through Congress… you got REAL-ID instead under a National Security pretext, using carrots-and-sticks about flights and entry to facilities but not having the Feds go ahead and just pay for it, which I believe would have got a few extra states on board.
To follow up, the requirements are pretty silly as well. For example, I have to “prove” my residency in the state. One of the methods of proof in a Voters Registration Card. That seems simple enough, but to get a voters registration card, one doesn’t need any proof at all that he or she resides in the state.
So, if I was a scammer wanting to prove residency, I would send in a voters registration application saying I lived at 123 Popular Street City, State, Zip and then have “proof” that I was a resident.
I would just need to know one person in the entire state who was willing to hold my mail. That person isn’t vouching for me that I am a resident or otherwise committing a crime. I wouldn’t have to be a state resident.
Which is one reason my home jurisdiction bans using our voter registration card (which happens to be a photo ID, so that issue solved) for anything other than voting and our DT does not take it for Real-ID. It does require evidence of residence for the original issuance but then for the rest of your life you can change addresses, or re-enroll if purged, just by presenting the old one.
Well, you’d be committing voter fraud, in addition to fraud in obtaining the DL, which is pretty serious, and the person holding your mail, if they knew about your plan and intended to assist you, would I think, in my state at least, be guilty of the same crimes under an aiding and abetting theory. So, no, that can’t be prevented, but that doesn’t mean there’s no recourse if someone does it, or that it would be without risk.
I mean, a common way to prove residence/address is a utility bill in your name. Nothing prevents you from arranging to transfer utilities into your name at a friend’s residence for a month, either. If you do it to commit fraud, then you’ve committed fraud.
It would also be fraud to go into the REAL ID office and claim that you live in State X. But if you tell your buddy to hold your mail because you think your wife is spying on it, let me use your address, and he does, your buddy isn’t committing a crime.
But none of that proves your residency in state X anymore than your word would at the REAL ID office.
And yes, that’s why I worded my post the way I did. If the facts were different, it might not be a crime.
I think REAL ID is dumb, puts my data at risk, and I’m not opting in. When I travel, I will use my passport. But it’s silly to pretend that a utility bill in your name, or voter registration card, are not fairly decent ways of proving residence just because motivated people could commit an additional crime to create false evidence of it.
I mean, all of your documents can be faked. That doesn’t make official ID highly unreliable. It does make the argument that it protects us from terrorism laughable, which was the case from the start. I remember it being transparently about not letting undocumented immigrants have drivers’ licenses.
According to Wikipedia, the original deadline was 2008, so this thing has been delayed seventeen years. And yet, no one is suggesting it just be scrapped.