I didn’t get mine yet but I’m surprised it is required for domestic flights. I thought it was just for Canada and Mexico.
There’s been some murmurs here in NY that our IDs will no longer be accepted federally because we now don’t require citizenship for licensing.
That’s a separate thing (the terribly-named Enhanced Drivers License). An EDL is REAL ID-compliant, but an ordinary drivers license with the enhanced security features mandated by REAL ID is not an Enhanced Drivers License (i.e. it’s enhanced but not Enhanced). :rolleyes: Except there’s at least one state (Washington?) where the only available form of REAL ID is the EDL. Totally clear, right?
Given how few states offer EDLs, and how few people have them in those states, they should probably change the name given how widespread the confusion is. (They won’t.)
you know i dont agree with UV on much but yeah i think the real id is BS overreaction … i mean they see your id when you buy a ticket they should just copy it if needed
No, you see you miss the whole point of RealID. See, in order to reduce the number of unlicensed and uninsured drivers several states dont verify citizenship. In other word, a illegal alien, who is otherwise a verified resident- can get a DrLic. This infuriates the MAGA hat wearers, so they came up with RealID to make sure we annoy them more.
It has nothing to do with Security or terrorism. It’s racism.
A certified copy of your birth certificate is a copy issued by the city/state/county department that keeps birth records. It typically has a statement certifying that it’s a true copy of the certificate or the facts that department has on record. The reason a “certified” copy is required is because they won’t accept a certificate issued by a hospital or a photocopy of a certified copy.
Depends which NY license you have - there’s the standard license , which will say something like not valid for Federal purposes. It doesn’t require proof of lawful residence. If you’ve just been renewing your license for 30 years without providing any additional info, that’s what you have. The REAL ID license requires proof that you are a in the US legally and proof of your SS number. This ID is valid at airports and for entering Federal buildings and military bases, etc. The Enhanced license ( which I believe is only issued by border states) allows you to return from Canada, Mexico and some Caribbean countries, but only by land or sea. It’s only available to US citizens , not permanent residents.
The RealID legislation was passed in 2005 and implementation was started during the Obama administration. Not to say there aren’t problems with the legislation, but it’s not something recent.
Double post. Darn hamsters.
I had to get the real ID license back in September '18. I had the documents, but my issue was that the name on my SS card didn’t match the other documents. When I applied for my Social Security card at age 13 instead of using Fullname Middlename Lastname, I used Full M. Lastname. All the other docs said Fullname M. Lastname. The Department of Driver Services said a middle initial was OK, but the truncated first name wouldn’t work for them. Off to the social security office I go. Sympathetic and understanding they were. I received my new SS card in the mail in less than a week. So, in September '18, I got a new driver’s license with the first new picture since 1998.
Anyone have any first-hand experience dealing with this I.D. nonsense … and a birth certificate issued by a foreign country in a different language from English?
The DMV clerk won’t be able to read it, of course. How do they even verify that I didn’t draw up a gibberish document my own self?
I was so happy to see that someone acknowledged that the CNMI is actually part of the USA. When we moved back from there in 2002, we had to do both a written and a road test to get DLs.
We got REAL IDs when we moved back to IN in 2018. I didn’t intend to, I just looked that website for what to bring. I didn’t see anything about what we were getting.
I don’t know about the rest of the state, but the MVD bureaus in northeast IN were amazingly fast, efficient, and friendly. Employees were calling out to each other about the time, and when we presented them with something unusual, (of course I did) they dealt with it quickly and cheerfully.
There are different ways to deal with it, but probably the most common is to use a different document altogether. Here’s a list of documents needed to apply for a driver’s license in Texas. You aren’t required to provide a birth certificate - you are required to provide proof of lawful residence in the US, which a foreign birth certificate wouldn’t do. If you were born in a foreign country and are a US citizen or in the US legally, you will have one of the other documents. You can also use a birth certificate as a secondary proof of identity, but again it is not required.
The reason you hear so much about birth certificates is because for almost all US citizens born in the US, that’s the proof of citizenship that all others are based on - before I had a passport, my only proof of citizenship was my birth certificate and the issuance of the passport relied on the birth certificate.
Introduced and pushed by Republicans. Forced on the Dems because no one wants to appear weak on National Security.
However, if you look at the way it is implemented- it’s racist. For example- you can travel on a Canadian drivers license or a foreign passport. In other words, if you reside in a nation with mostly White people, you are Ok. And foreign passports are easy to fake, so it’s not security.
Recently this has become an issue also with the matter of Puerto Rico Birth Certificates (putting aside that though printed in both English and Spanish, the Spanish text is bigger and bolder, so, “suspicious!”), affecting the large number of people born in PR who pre-REALID got their DL in the Island and never bothered with a passport, and the many among those who then moved to another state and got a pre-REALID DL of their new state of residence and still never bothered with a passport.
Now with the “final” REALID-for-flying deadline many of them are in a bit of a pickle since back around 2009 due to a major document-faking and ID-theft issue due to bad security practices, the Commonwealth voided all previously issued Certified Copies of the Birth Record(*) and established a new format and protocol. As it happens, even people in-island remained oblivious to this until someone official would tell them “no, this doesn’t work any more”. Small problem: because of that mentioned security crackdown, the Registry is now quite a bit more careful about having you prove you are entitled to get that paper, and if you happily lived for decades with just a crumbling old Birth Certificate unused in the bottom of a suitcase and a non-REALID license as your only “papers”, it’s tougher to do that w/o showing up in person.
(* Which as we recall from the Birther brouhaha, is what every state actually issues these days, a document on security paper on which they print the major highlights of your Birth Record Document as it appears in their files, not an actual facsimile of the “original”)
Not this time.
Implementation has been delayed indefinitely due to the virus.
And they really mean it this time!
Just got an email from Arizona MVD which also says a one year delay. Also asks people delay coming in for a Real ID license (which needs an appointment anyway) until the Covid crisis is over.
Dumb question that may have been addressed upthread; why is a US passport less trouble to get than a Real ID driver’s license? I can sit at home, fill out the passport application and mail it in. No appointment needed. No Social Security number proof needed. No proof of where I live.
Well, you need a birth cert.
Yeah, and in other nations it’s even easier than that.