I dunno. Americans, as a whole, have a strong distate for a “national ID card”. Maybe it’s that frontier mentality that we hang onto. And yet, many European countries have national ID cards, and seem to do so w/o suppressing civil liberties. Let’s hear from some our European friends on this board, and hear how things work for them-- the good and bad.
I have no problem with the part of this that is a crackdown on people who are in this country illegally. Can’t get a driver’s license? Well, how about going back to the country where you are citizen and getting one there???
Think of it this way-- suppose we were to institute a national healthcare system, which so many on this board espouse. Wouldn’t there HAVE to be an naional ID to go along with it?
Congress can always make compliance a condition of recieving federal highway funds. It worked for the drinking age. And North Dakota lost when they sued the USDoT over it.
Why separate the two? Technically, most of the 9/11 hijackers were illegally present in this country, and if the INS had been on the ball, the tragedy could have possibly been prevented. Granted, “illegal immigration” means, to most people, “people illegally here because they want to live here for a long time” rather than “people illegally here because they want to learn to fly planes into skyscrapers”, but if giving the INS better tools will result in better safety, it adds up to the same thing.
Actually, when I first heard about this, the thing that leaped out at me was the completely unreasonable burden being placed on state agencies, in that they would be responsible not just for accepting all the forms of ID required to secure a driver’s license but reviewing and verifying them as well. The cost to these agencies, and the amount of staffing required to meet this obligation, will be enormous. There’s a risk of crippling state governments who will be forced to shunt serious resources to their motor-vehicle bureaus to chase down and certify all the documentation provided by their applicants; and, of course, as is standard procedure for this kind of thing, the federal legislation provides no funding or other support mechanism to help the states carry the load.
I suspect that as much as the illegal immigration and police-state objectives being served, you’ve also got the Grover Nordquist types who welcome the opportunity to throw a huge monkey wrench into the budgets of the states.
As an employer we have to pay to verify ID, SS#, Education, DMV Record, Criminal Background. So as far as I’m concerned - Yes I want them verifying identification prior to issuing yet another ID / drivers license.
Let us consider for just a moment just what this new statute means in a State like Iowa.
Within the last few years the state legislature, in its general lust for reducing state expenditures and shifting the burden onto the counties, abolished the Department of Transportation’s drivers license office and the traveling teams that staffed them and shifted the burden over to the county treasurers. That means that if you want to get a drivers license or renew a drivers license in Iowa you go to the county treasurer’s office in the county court house or maybe in a city hall if the treasurer wants to set up full or part time satellite offices. One of the things you have to do to get or renew a license is to show proof of automobile liability insurance. You don’t have to have insurance to lawfully drive, only to have insurance on the day you apply for the license. There is a significant difference.
At the same time the meat packing industry has attracted large numbers of immigrant, mostly Mexican and Central American, labor to the area. Iowa has vastly more pigs that it has people. It also has industrial chicken houses and 500 to 1000 cow dairy farms. Cheap immigrant labor is in demand and illegal immigrants provide it. Some of those immigrant laborers are papered, they are legal aliens, but a fair number are not. One may guess that all the people who have the same social security number probably do not have a valid Green Card.
Some might think that undocumented Mexican and Central American packing house workers pose a threat to the national security but I doubt it. The same may be said for the Russian and Ukranian workers in the Kosher packing house in the next county. For the most part they are family people living by the extended family in relative squalor in rented houses and hired hand bunk houses.
The INS in the central Midwest is terribly under strength.
So, here is the situation: If an undocumented alien wants to get a drivers license he and his two brothers and three of four cousins who all own a rattle trap car together diddly-bop up to the courthouse and ask to take the drivers license test, driving and written – I think there is a Spanish language test, don’t know about one in Russian of Ukranian or Yiddish. The middle age lady designated by the treasurer as the drivers license examiner tears her self away from her usual job of recording the payment of real estate taxes, or boat licenses or issuing license plates. She asks to see ID and Green Card. Our applicant doesn’t have that stuff. At this point one of two things happens.
(1)If the drivers license lady refuses to issue a license and calls the INS. Our applicant, his brothers and cousins high tail it out of there, collect their extended families and make it for the turkey plants in Minnesota or across the Marquette Bridge into Wisconsin. They do that by driving their rattle trap car on the public highways where you and I are going about our business with no license and not one scrap of liability insurance.
(2)The drivers license lady calls the sheriff instead of the INS. A deputy shows up and takes our applicant, his brothers and his cousins into custody, flings them into the county jail and then the sheriff calls the INS. In a week or so some INS agent shows up and hauls the whole bunch off to the county jail in Omaha pending deportation hearings. As a result of this nobody from the undocumented community ever applies for a drivers license again. Rather they charge up and down the public highways where you and I are going about our business without drivers licenses and without one shred of liability insurance.
Now just how that has rendered our dear country one bit safer from Jiahadist Terror is beyond my understanding. What it does is substantially increase the chance that if some Mexican, Central American, Russian or Ukranian sideswipes my car, or house, or daughter or wife, or, God forbid, me, there is going to be no insurance coverage and my insurance rates are going to go up. Better we have some rational immigrant labor policy along the lines of what I understand to be ( and I feel sure God will forgive me for this) the President’s guest worker program.
You will note that this discussion does not even touch the volatile possibility of having some over officious police officer in a long leather coat and a sub-machine gun slung around his neck swaggering up and demanding to see my papers – Seine Auswiess, Bitte?
Anytime you get state-level bureaucrats trying to understand Federal immigration laws, you get trouble. There are literally dozens of documents or combinations of documents that can verify that a person is legally present in the U.S., and even the agency that is supposed to understand and enforce them fucks up a lot of the time. And why make a legally present foreign national’s driver’s license expire on the same day as his/her visa if he/she can remain legally in the U.S. for another 240 dyas after it expires if an extension was filed before its expiration? (And work legally, if the visa category includes employment authorization?)
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services takes several months in most cases to process the extension petition, so the people are supposed to not drive during that period, even if their jobs, etc. require it? This is a dumb idea.
More on the REAL ID Act (see p. 5 for info on driver’s license requirements):
Pretty obviously it doesn’t. However, the experience here is that our immigrant are working – they don’t come here for the climate. They do apply for a license, they do show minimal competence and they do have insurance and they have funds to do all that from the employment that brought them here in the first place. Just as soon as the drivers license process becomes part and parcel of the immigration police the motivation to get a drivers license and to have minimal insurance is gone and replaced by a motive to avoid seeking a license and to avoid the insurance requirement that is tied to the drivers license. That requiring proof of legal resident status as a requirement for a drivers license some how makes the nation safer is, it seems to me, a dubious proposition, and that it promotes uninsured driving, and thus makes it more likely that there will be no compensation for people injured, seems apparent.
In places like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas where immigration across the southern border seems to give a lot of people the willies things may be different , but out here in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, except for the occasional reactionary Congressman ranting about “English Only” and so called official language, there are vew people who see the Mexican, Central American, Russian and Ukranian families who have recently joined us as any sort of a terrorism threat. Too many of us remember our grand parent’s immigration stories not to identify with these people to some extent. These people have lives that a hard enough already without making it harder in order to promote some hypothetical gain in national security.
When the Real ID act comes into full effect, will a passport still be sufficient ID for air travel? I note that the Real ID act requires proof of address, but IRC getting a passport does not.
Spavined Gelding, how is the DL applicant supposed to show proof of insurance if he doesn’t own a car? Or does liability insurance in IA pertain to the driver, rather than the vehicle? In CA, proof of insurance is required for vehicle registration, but not for DL.
Foreign terrorists will be so fearful of identity theft, and the subsequent thrashing of their credit rating, that they will stay out of the US alltogether.
Just for starters, some of the September 11th highjackers got drivers licenses illegally from a Virginia DMV office right across the street from where I was living at the time. They then used those ID’s to board the planes.
Uh, yeah. If we outlaw reckless driving without a license, then only outlaws will drive recklessly without a license. :rolleyes:
I’ll make you a bet. If, after Real ID is phased in (assuming it isn’t struck down as unconstitutional), if there is any appreciable increase in traffic accidents due to unlicensed illegal immigrants, I’ll eat my hat.
Assuming the news article left out a few tidbits of important information, let’s take a stab at it:
1) Birth Certificate - A birth certificate or a certified birth certificate? If a county or state requires proof of identification in order to issue you your own certified birth certificate, what will the proof be? A driver’s license? A credit card? Just your word?
2) Photo ID - A photo ID as issued by a government agency, an employer or something I can create with my computer? If issued by the first two, why sort of ID will they need in order to create the photo ID in the first place? A driver’s license? A birth certificate? A certified birth certificate? Just your word?
**
3) Proof of a valid Social Securitry Number** - I assume this to mean my SSN issued by the SSA to me? And how does the SSA issue me proof of my SSN? Weerll, according to the SSA, they require two forms of identification, such as:
[ul]
[li] Driver’s license[/li][li] Marriage or divorce record[/li][li] Military records[/li][li] Employer ID card[/li][li] Adoption record[/li][li] Life insurance policy[/li][li] Passport[/li][li] Health Insurance card (not a Medicare card)[/li][li] School ID card[/li][/ul]
A replacement SSN card for those who lost theirs so many years ago need two of these:
[ul]
[li] Driver’s license[/li][li] Marriage or divorce record[/li][li] Military records[/li][li] Employer ID card[/li][li] Adoption record[/li][li] Life insurance policy[/li][li] Passport[/li][li] Health Insurance card (not a Medicare card)[/li][li] School ID card[/li][/ul]
4) A document showing my name and address - Something like a utility bill or something? You know, where one does need to prove who you are in order to obtain the identification. Can I print out my own name and address from my computer using a business form I created myself or purchased from Office Depot?
Anyone notice a pattern here? Shall I direct you to the Department of Redundancy Department for an explanation? Since many of the official IDs require other official IDs and many of them require a driver’s license as an ID, at what point do we break the circle?
And ultimately, will this do anything to prevent a terrorist attack or three in America? I mean, that’s the intent of the legislation, isn’t it? After all, the bill is an Act “To establish and rapidly implement regulations for State driver’s license and identification document security standards, to prevent terrorists from abusing the asylum laws of the United States, to unify terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility and removal, and to ensure expeditious construction of the San Diego border fence.”
Ordinary people, even kids, have been obtaining false IDs for years and that hasn’t stopped illegal activities. Those with the knowledge, means and wherewithal can produce flawless false IDs. Would not a terrorist with the right backing be able to do the same under the Real ID Act to accomplish their mission? After all, an almost flawless fake driver’s license, accompanying credit cards and the like, only need to be used long enough to complete a terrorist act.
A number of states already require picture IDs, a SSN, and a utility bill before they issue driver’s licenses: Washington, DC, does as well. If these states can do it, why can’t others?
So, the new ID standards mean that they will have to get a few more fake documents than before? That’s it? That’s what we’re risking invasion of our privacy, etc for? So that terrorists will have to get a few more fake documents than beofre?
Shirley there’s some further benefits re the GWoT than merely requiring terrorists to fake a couple of extra documents, right?
and more of them going to jail and or being deported for minor traffic violations that would otherwise not even inspire any inquiry beyond producing said licence to a police officer.