Real ID Act: Better Have Your Birth Certificate!
Starting in 2008, renewing a drivers license will require a personal visit to the DMV. Mail-in and online renewal, which had just begun to shorten seemingly unending DMV lines, will no longer be allowed under the Real ID Act. In addition, license renewal will require applicants to provide the DMV with: their current license or other picture ID, their actual social security card (not a copy), utility bills showing address of residence and last but certainly not least, their birth certificate.
Drivers licenses and ID cards issued by states that fail to comply with the Real ID Act by the end of 2008 will not be accepted for purposes like boarding airplanes and entering federal courthouses. Under the Real ID Act, drivers licenses will effectively become national identification cards.
Intended to prevent terrorists from abusing U.S. asylum laws and to establish terrorism-related grounds for deportation, the Real ID Act made it through Congress as an amendment to a larger bill authorizing emergency spending for the global war on terror and tsunami relief. It's passage, which went almost unnoticed in 2005, will become very much noticed in 2008.
Also See:
The Virtues of Learning to Wait
Top Ten Signs of the US Police State
ACLU: Personal Liberty Falls Victim to War on Terror
Comments
Instead of putting the burden on individual State DMV offices, why didn’t the US government take care of this themselves at THEIR EXPENSE - REQUIRING APPROPRIATE DOCUMENTATION & issuing a separate ID card or AT ONE OF THEIR FACILITIES? That way the disgruntled public will know who to gripe at. The DMV has enough on it’s plate already. This is completely stupid but one always has to consider the source. They never do anything logical.
I am appalled. This is fascism and we won’t stand for it! I will never acquire one of these numbers of the beast and if the US government makes me a criminal because I refuse to obey their unconstitutional laws then I resign my duty to the US government! This is my country not the government.
I can’t wait for the screams of those who can’t “prove” who they are to the satisfaction of the powers that be.
Some examples -
Your immigrant parents named you Vincenzo on your US birth certificate - but every other piece of paper calls you James or Jimmy.
You were born and adopted in one of those US States (most) that have permanently sealed your original birth certificate and adoption papers. And the powers that be don’t like your Amended Birth Certificate because it was filed ‘more than one year” after you were born. This already happens with Passport Services.