Isn’t a passport just a basic photo ID? Seems reasonable to ask for on to check people are who they say they are. Everyone already has a passport.
Personally I rarely carry any ID at all, and when I do it's a non-"real ID" driver's license, which I have though I don't own a car. Almost anywhere where ID is "required" (including air travel) it turns out that if you don't have any you can still do what you want (note I'm old enough that I don't get carded for alcohol). I generally have ID with me only if I know in advance I'm going somewhere where I cannot do without it, a couple of times a month. I fly more than that!
(It's absurd that a driving licenses are also IDs, but that's another discussion).
Wow, what's the procedure like for when you don't have your ID if you don't mind me asking? What do you tell them when they ask why, how do they verify you, how early do you come/long does it take, etc.?
When you fly without ID (note: this is different from having ID but refusing to provide it -- I never do this) you just get a pat down search and your luggage looked at, basically. And this is true in general, though some NY buildings really will enforce an ID (absurd! It's just to keep poor people out) and some federal courthouses for some reason. I mean, it's not like people are checking IDs against some watch list when you walk into a building, nor do most people know what all forms of ID look like, so what's the purpose of all that nonsense?
So for the ID case, like most things in life, I simply tell the truth. But for SSN I do fib: when asked for SSN (say at a drugstore or whatever) I say "sorry, I'm a foreigner and don't have one". Yes, I have one, but again, most people who ask for an SSN collect it for no reason that is useful to me.
If you make a big deal of it then of course people won't want to deal with you -- it's generally not the decision of the person you're talking with anyway. But if you act like it's the most natural thing in the world then life usually just goes on, as it should.
The whole idea of needing ID to fly is quite recent; you used to by cheap unused tickets on craigslist (and before that from classified ads in newspapers). Round trip tickets were much cheaper than one way so people would buy a round trip and then sell the unused segment. Or a company would book a ticket and then due to a change of plans someone else would take the flight. On some flights you bought the ticket on the plane.
Then again on a few occasions I got on the wrong flight and end up some place unexpected.
The destructive permissions culture that we see online expanded along with parallel development in the physical world.
I'm rarely asked unless there is a regulatory reason they're asking (and then I tell the truth). But when someone wants to know mine for no legitimate reason, I give them Richard Nixon's SSN.
That's interesting. I wonder what happens if you're a defendant and they won't let you in the building?
I mentioned this in another thread but for me they just had me talk to a more senior person who asked me some questions and asked for "a prescription bottle, a bank card or something else with your name on it". They also swiped my hands for explosives. Total extra time was just a few minutes.
I do usually carry ID, but (except for flying) I can't remember the last time I actually had to show it to anybody.
My back of my phone has a label with my kid’s phone number on it.
I recently got some for my kids for an upcoming trip and it required me to take time off of work to visit the Post Office during a narrow window when the passport clerk is there, whom we had to pay for her services, to then mail off each passport application individually along with original birth certificates and another check to get the passports a couple of months later. Both parents had to be at the post office to process the application. It's a pretty awful process.
The reason (I assume) for the 5-year expiration is that kids look a lot different in 5 years.
Here in Portland you can go to several post offices but the easier way is to go to the county headquarters. Very short wait time, photographer on premises (I keep wanting to just stand the kids against a wall but wife vetoes that), etc.
Last year I had business on Spring Break and my wife took our kids to British Columbia. I was a little surprised that they made it across the border without a hitch. No notarized letter, etc. We did have to have both parents notarize something for my son to cross the border for Boy Scouts.
Unfortunately, thanks to racists, it's considered politically incorrect to even require a photo ID when voting, so I don't see us solving this problem in a satisfactory way soon.
Give every citizen access to a completely free ID card, including giving them access to the required supporting documents for free.
A lot of people, especially older people and people without a lot of spare cash, simply don't have photo ID. If you're homeless, getting all the documentation needed to get a license is a severe impediment.
This needs to be voted on by a full session of Congress and debated in the public sphere, not quietly rolled out at a few airports to normalize it.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/after/p...
Most US citizens do not have a passport. Passports are a real pain to get, so people tend not to bother unless they're planning a specific out-of-country trip.
Only thing I could think was it was a new passport. Pissed me off though. That's just stupid.
I'm pretty sure most native born citizens don't get passports unless and until they make plans to travel internationally.
I’d recommend planning ahead instead, but in my case I couldn’t give up my soon-to-expire passport as I was traveling and didn’t expect another international trip so soon after expiration (to use the alternate means of proving citizenship and identity rather than returning the old passport book).
I assumed Americans would want the same kind of basic freedom to move between countries?
You'd get a really funny look if you were suddenly asked to go on a business trip to the US and you said you didn't have a passport yet. Not sure why it wouldn't be the same if you were in the US and asked to go on a business trip to the UK.
I think the difference is the size of the US. I've traveled a fair bit for work, but never been asked to leave the country. Jobs that do require international travel often explicitly say so in the description and say you must have a passport.
As far as freedom to travel, unless you happen to be on the northern or southern border, you can't just hop on a plane and travel out of country on a whim. It's just flat-out not as easy to travel to other countries here as it is in Europe.
If you're in the US, going to a different country is a major undertaking unless you happen to live near the Canadian or Mexican border, regardless of whether you have a passport or not. Casual international travel is just not a thing for most people.
How come it’s seen as pretty normal to go for example from the UK to New York for a weekend, even a middle class couple might do a Christmas shopping weekend like that once a year, but the opposite, the same distance and cost, is seen as a major undertaking?
I think the short answer is that the US is physically huge. Just the state I live in alone is about the same land area as Germany, and there are 49 others -- many of which are larger than mine.
Just getting to an airport that you can take an international flight to the UK from can be a big deal all by itself. It's not cheap (an oddity about plane fares in the US is that domestic travel can cost as much or more than flying across the Atlantic), and can take a day or two. The cost of the flight from, say, New York to London is not necessarily the major portion of the travel expense.
The travel time is significant, as I mentioned. For a lot of people (pretty much anyone who doesn't live in the general north-eastern portion of the US), a "weekend trip" would require 4-6 days. Vacation time is limited, so not everyone is willing to spend a significant portion of it on an airplane or in airports.
Cost is a big deal -- traveling overseas is expensive, and the prices for things in the UK are quite high as well (probably on par with New York, but New York is very expensive). Most people who aren't wealthy (which is the vast majority of people) could really only expect to afford it once or twice in a lifetime, unless they are willing to sacrifice a lot of other things to make it happen more frequently -- and some people do, but most people have other priorities for the money.
(I wonder why your comments keep getting downvoted? That's weird.)
Hotels often ask for ID. You don’t know if your plans will change and you’ll need to fly straight to another country, etc.
Some ID, yes, people try to have one all the time. A passport though? Most people I know only ever carry that for international travel. This is about domestic travel.
> Hotels often ask for ID. You don’t know if your plans will change and you’ll need to fly straight to another country, etc.
Yes but that's for international travel. We're asking about domestic travel because this affects them just the same.
It's certainly not happened to me, and I'm in the quite unusual position of being someone who's traveled internationally for business on <24h notice.
In other words, no, I never take my passport with me unless I leave my house intending to leave the country.
I certainly did in the UK, as well as to prove my age in a bar etc. Lots and lots of people "in their own countries" don't have a driver's license because public transport is enough.
Britain has a proof of age card, but 10 years ago it wasn't recognized very well: http://www.pass-scheme.org.uk/
The more accurate one is that elements of the Federal Government are "unhappy" that some States will issue a Drivers License based on understanding of road laws and practical skills, and not based on demonstration of legal residence or citizenship.
Washington, for example, is one. You pass your test, written, practical, pay your fee. They don't ask about your citizenship.
So the Federal Government says "Well, we won't allow your DLs to be used federally (or for flying), then".
If the federal government wants to have an ID that displays legal residence, then they can either entrust the states to do so or issue one themselves, which seems even less politically viable.
Also, do you think California was being actually inept or just willfully ignorant based on their demographics? I live in NJ and I know we were also one of the laggards. Shocker, we also have a very large immigrant population, and have a AG that issued orders not to assist ICE. Seems like it's probably easier to play coy and just drag your feet on this one. Or it could just be good ol fashioned government bureaucracy and ineptitude.