I’m Australian and I’ve never had a driver’s licence or a passport. I stopped fighting and paid for an identity card a couple of years ago, because I was sick of explaining to morons that some grown-ups don’t drive and therefore don’t have licences. I considered getting a passport, but the ID card was significantly cheaper. I haven’t had any problems using it on the occasions I’ve been asked for photo ID.
I can’t imagine a cop demanding proof that I have a right to be in this country. I’m white, I don’t have a foreign accent, and if I got arrested my ID checks out: I am who I say I am, I was born here, I’ve never been out of the country. I can’t imagine any circumstance that would require me to prove it to the cops.
Probably! Who wants to go to Bulgaria, anyway? Bulgarians working illegally in other countries is a more likely scenario. Anyone foreigner crazy enough to be there on purpose probably has a good reason for it. (I’m being a little facetious, but people really did regularly ask me what I was doing there and why on earth I would want to live in such a poor country where there’s no work and how they would all live in America if they could.)
As I read it, the Quebec Medicare card is only available to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and foreign nationals entitled to be in Canada. However, I don’t see anything about what happens should the latter status expire, so I guess a Medicare card isn’t actually proof that you have any right to be in the country now. (Nevertheless, it’s pretty much the default photo ID for most purposes.)
I guess I’d be screwed, unless I started carrying around a passport or birth certificate.
You can now get a wallet-size version of your passport in addition to the booklet version. And I think the wallet-size version can be used to get into other North American countries.
Best I could do would be a credit card (hey, it shows someone’s given me a bank account!). Actually, that’s not as daft as it sounds, as in the UK we are not required to carry ID (even a driving licence when we’re driving), so on the odd occasion I might be asked to prove who I am (picking up a parcel at the PO, for instance) a credit card suffices.
My dad was a “legal alien” when he was living in Canada. You think he carried around his Landed Immigrant card all the time? Hell, no! Like a passport, he only pulled it out of the “important paper locker” when he was travelling abroad ETA: it was too precious a document to risk losing. Likewise, my mom is a “legal alien” in the U.S. and ony ever got her green card thingamajig out of the safety deposit box when she was going to be out of the U.S.
Both my parents are lilly-white folks and aren’t likely to get pulled over in places like East Haven, CT. (In case you missed it, they got in the news when an investigation showed that over 56% of traffic tickets were issued to Hispanic residents… in a town where they represent only 5.8% of the population, plus, cops were lying about it.)
I consider “on me” to include what’s in my house. I have my license and social security card on my person, and my birth certificate in a filing cabinet at home.
My driver’s license wouldn’t help because it states my South American birthplace but doesn’t say anything about my citizenship status.
A friend of my wife’s invited us down to visit her in AZ this summer, but my wife absolutely refused. No way does she want me on the road when I look the profile (since I’m also often mistaken for Middle Eastern, we went through plenty of that already in our post-9/11 travels).
I keep my permanent resident card (green card) in my wallet - they say you are supposed to keep it on you at all times. In a sense as a permanent resident it would be easier for me to prove my legal presence than a citizen - a birth certificate or passport is less convenient for carrying around all the time.
