Plenty of people literally can’t afford that.
And this is the type of thing that should be phased in over a few years so people have plenty of time to comply.
A national ID card is an idea that pretty much everyone can agree on, in theory. It’s the implementation that causes the problems. You have to make it free to everybody or it’s just another version of a poll tax.
I agree with this
There can be issues other than the money. It can be hard to obtain the document. Especially with older people, from a less documented time, they might not even know for sure where they were born.
And the issue of people who have changed their name – especially women who changed their name upon marriage, without a lot of paperwork – that can be hard to prove, too.
Unless someone has dementia I don’t see how they wouldn’t know where they were born
I assume most people when they get married have a marriage certificate
Yes it is hard which is probably the point of the law, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect people to keep a copy of their birth certificate and marriage license, if applicable.
They should maybe teach this in public school, would be more helpful than some other stuff they waste time on. I certainly would like to have had a class on which documents are actually worth saving. But I never figured I would discard these particular documents. I can see someone inadvertently losing it but other than cost considerations of replacing it, I don’t see any other excuse not to get a replacement.
I agree.
Bless my mother, she kept all her kids’ birth certificates as well as her own and her parents’ original birth and marriage certificates. All of those were needed to get my “granny visa” to work in the UK. I have in turn kept all of our kids’ birth certificates.
happens, and even vital documents can disappear. Fires, disasters, theft, gremlins. My wife and I kept our birth certificates, marriage certificate, and passports in a safe, and had the safe stolen a few years ago. (It’s where my wife stored her prescription fentanyl, and a troubled adult son of a neighbor figured that out…)
As far as replacing vital records… depending on the jurisdictions involved, it can be a process, and there are plenty of non-actuaries out there who, for whatever reason, can’t understand bureaucratic processes.
You might be surprised…and even if they know generally where they were born, they don’t always know which government entity to turn to. There’s a reason Americans have a stereotype of being lousy at geography. Perhaps they know they were born in City X in state Y…but do they know to put down County Z on the paperwork / to submit the records request to County Z, in states where that’s the process?
And then, if they’re of limited means, the costs associated with obtaining such records, both in terms of time and finances, may not be trivial.
I also have had the experience of helping out with an urban street ministry that tries to help homeless people transition back to more conventional life. Sometimes, part of the challenge is getting them the ID they need to function in society…and getting the necessary documents to get the ID can be a big challenge.
For example, if you were born in Arkansas, have no valid ID, and have no (or no contact with) close blood relatives, you have to go before a judge and secure a court order to get a copy of your birth certificate…if you can convince them that you are who you say you are.
Fortunately, very few people have to do that…especially since the success rate is low unless you know who the two sympathetic judges in the state are, and how to get on their dockets.
Prospectively, if it becomes clear that people will need that, sure. Retrospectively? What if your mom didn’t keep your birth certificate? Or you are estranged. Or… What is it just never occurred to your parents to give that to you?
This used to be a country where people didn’t need “papers”, and Americans were proud of that. I know people who were really pissed that the bank teller requested their id. That’s not the nation we are any longer, but there have been many decades for documents to be lost.
Generally we Americans don’t know whether Europe is a city, a country, or a continent, but people manage to get around in their own little area. Not that everyone knows their county, but a google search like “which county is X address in” should usually be good enough
That’s exactly it. You anyway need this paperwork to function in society. I would hope most people aren’t so troubled as the homeless people you met who didn’t even have an ID (how were they supposed to find a stable job to support themselves without one? No ID means your choice of jobs is much more limited and probably very low paying, oh , and possibly illegal most of the time.) But even the people you met would have needed this stuff for a job so need to have it anyway.
Kudos to you for doing this work, by the way.
I absolutely think that we would be going wrong if we became a country where people got stopped and asked for papers. But requiring documentation for going to the bank or voting is not like that.
That may have once been reasonable – seems odd to me that it could have been reasonable anytime after the 60s - but it’s not been reasonable for a long, long time. I say that as someone who’s had my identity stolen to the tune of 30K on credit cards (thankfully did not impact me).
Have you noticed how dumb some people are? You’d think they’d think to Google it, but some don’t.
I, of course, glossed over that there are some people who, for various reasons, may not know more than a state, or might have incorrect information about the location of their birth.
My wife didn’t find out until she was an adult what her actual birth location was. She knew where her mom and birth father were living when she was born, but they had been visiting a nearby city when her mom went into labor…and that particular detail hadn’t been disclosed to my wife until she applied for a passport for the first time.
Why shouldn’t it be like that for banking? But-for government meddling, all they really need is a way to confirm that a particular person is authorized to access an account, and perhaps an address of where to send statements.
While I was too young to be aware of the paperwork when it was originally set up, but I remember that for my first savings account, the bank cared about the passbook they issued, not ID.
Yes, they need a way to confirm that an account holder is the account holder…but strictly speaking, that doesn’t necessarily need to be linked to a particular set of government records.
I kinda think we’re are already there for people who look Hispanic. ICE has been grabbing some permanent residents, and whisking them away. They haven’t yet done that to citizens, but I’m sure it’s helpful to be able to prove you are a citizen.
But i find it reassuring that my bank teller wants my ID. (The branch manager says that he gets people who are offended by it, though. So even today, there are bank customers who don’t expect that.) I also find it reassuring that she recognizes me (as does the manager) as i think that reduces the odds someone with fake ID will mess with me, at least in person.
I got my first few jobs without ID. If I’d stayed in one of those, i might never had needed ID except to travel. There are lots of people living who are older than i am.
I saw an estimate that 9% of US citizens over 18 couldn’t easily prove their citizenship. I find that plausible. And my guess is that most of them are married women who never needed a passport.
I received a couple of tribal bulletins shortly after the crackdowns started reporting that a few members spent time in ICE custody, and thus it was important to carry proof of citizenship, or at least tribal ID.
Considering how ICE has been operating…mistakes are being made, and there are a few stories out there of ICE agents in the field not caring particularly much about having proof of citizenship on your person.
Orphans. People with unstable family lives. Broken homes. You may not know many people like this, but there are many of them.
I know someone who knew what state she was born in but not the county, and her parents moved when she was 6 months old to another state. There are many common reasons to not know where you were born.
Step 1 to getting any form of ID: provide an ID. Birth certificates are good starting points, but usually require a parent to get anywhere with one. It was really easy to get my kids passports, but that required showing up in person, with birth certificates, and both parents, with the parents IDs. Difficulty goes up quickly as soon as you start missing requirements.
Chaotic parents? Family moved around a lot. Even with reasonably good parents there are a lot of details that get forgotten or confused over 20-30 years.
The most common being that your parents didn’t tell you. No one remembers that on their own.
Clarification that, unless I’ve missed something, the government hasn’t released the names (or an alleged crime) for many of those being sent to Guantanamo.
We don’t know whether citizens have or haven’t been sent to Guantanamo without due process.
We don’t yet know whether citizens have been forcibly removed in this crackdown.
We do know that there are isolated instnces of this having happened in the past.
Let’s just say that in an abundance of caution, i finally upgraded my driver’s license to “real ID” (which was difficult, as i didn’t have any proof of my social security number, which for some reason they required) sometime after it looked like Trump would be elected, and well before the inauguration.