REAL ID

[ebonypearl]

Critters at the Door
Originally uploaded by nodigio

Oklahoma is one of the states that has banned compliance with REAL ID, and this makes me very happy. We already have so many different forms of ID we need to "prove" we're citizens. we don't need one more.

Driver's licenses are permits to drive a motorized vehicle, nothing more. They should not ever be used as a valid form of ID, and I have never used mine for ID purposes.

My Social Security Card and Passport should be more than enough ID to "prove" I'm a US Citizen. The Social Security Card, at least, must be acquired by all people born in the US, making it the ideal "universal" ID card.

I resent being treated like a criminal and forced to show my "papers".

I still have my grandparents' and mother's papers and ration cards they had to show in Germany and I refuse to be in the same position they were put in, humiliated by people in uniform who could demand their papers at any time, and would beat them or imprison them if the papers weren't presented quickly enough.

I know that's not the reason Oklahoma refuses to comply with the REAL ID program - they cite economic reasons. I really don't care what reasons they give so long as we don't get that program here.

I don't want to have to carry "papers" with me everywhere I go and have to show them to any little despot in a uniform who thinks he can control me.

Can we say "civil disobedience" here?

This is one issue I will protest. The memory of being forced to carry "papers", and the consequences thereof, are still too recent to cave in on this. Did our politicians learn nothing from World War II? Must we repeat the misery and fear and degradation all over again?

Comments

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Your passport, being a federal ID, IS supposed to qualify then as a federal ID. (I know that sentence is repetitive; it's meant to be so.)

You are right on

[(Anonymous)]

but for the vast majority of people they no longer remember history or no longer believe it. If REAL ID is only defeated because of economic reasons, it will not be too much longer before a national ID card comes back in a different guise trying to do the same thing.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

incidentally, SS cards are not supposed to be used for ID, either, and you don't have to have one, legally - otoh, if you choose not to, you might as well start carrying around a laminated card with that section of law printed on it for when people ask for it.

-bs