The Real ID Deadline Will Never Arrive | Hacker News Reader

The Real ID Deadline Will Never Arrive

theatlantic.com

26 pointsbookofjoe16 comments

My friend renewed his Oregon driver's license last year. There was no pressure or push towards a REAL ID. He does not have a passport.

I got a California REAL ID a few years ago, at my normal renewal time, for a few reasons:

1. I already had all of the necessary paperwork.

2. I was curious if the process would be very different (it took a ~5 minutes longer than a non-REAL ID, but that was it).

3. I thought it would count as a List A document on the Form I-9 (https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-9...)

On that last point, I was wrong: For the Form I-9, a REAL ID counts the same as a driver's license. Turns out, I'm not the only one who thought this (https://sdeahr.org/hr-blog/how-does-real-id-affect-employee-...).

As a result, I'm no longer in support of the REAL ID.

Reading through all this, I just think about restricting travel.

Just reading through this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...

The courts have even put it above taxes!

The U.S. Supreme Court in Crandall v. Nevada, 73 U.S. 35 (1868) declared that freedom of movement is a fundamental right and therefore a state cannot inhibit people from leaving the state by taxing them.

Freedom of travel is a fundamental right, yes, but that doesn't mean that using a particular conveyance is. For instance, driving is not a fundamental right at all and traveling by air is restricted in a number of different ways. Neither of those things run afoul of constitutional guarantees.

"Real ID is a peculiar hybrid—the closest thing to a national ID that was politically viable at the time of the act’s passage"

You mean, like a passport?

It's a superset. In addition to folks who hold a US passport, permanent Residents can get a REAL ID, as can other folks with a foreign passport (in certain situations).

What's more, to get a US passport, you need to provide proof of identity. And for new adult applicants, the most common form of ID is a driver's license!

is there really a point to showing ID to fly, something that was spurred on not by 9/11 but by the loss of TWA 800 in the 90s iirc?

edit:

> the rule was a ‘do something’ reaction during the Clinton administration in response to TWA flight 800, before anyone had any idea what had happened to the aircraft.

https://viewfromthewing.com/42388/

https://archive.ph/w2oC2

Will we be able to leave our shoes on once REAL ID is a requirement to fly?

Real ID is inherently racist. The purpose is to deny travel privileges to undocumented workers. We should all oppose it.

I didn't know "undocumented worker" was a race.

You called traveling a privilege. I disagree. But anyway, let's say it is a privilege. Why should someone who is in the country illegally be allowed to freely move around once inside? Why not put up barriers for them?

Not who you were replying to, but freedom of movement is a fundamental human right.

If that were widely believed, passports wouldn't exist, and trespassing wouldn't be something you could be charged with.

You can say it's a right, but I'm not sure there's any wealthy nation that believes that any random human should be allowed to travel wherever they please without paperwork to prove they belong and/or are safe.

I'm not really a fan of real ID, but I also think that the US should has a national ID and the US has the right to deny free travel to those it didn't invite in anyway.

Ummm, America? I do not need any paperwork to walk wherever I want to, most of Europe is that way too. I’ve crossed borders on foot a couple times in Europe. It’s not a big deal. In my old life I flew over a lot of borders - you cannot see the line usually from the air. Stressing about imaginary lines is unbelievably silly.

Look, humans are by our very nature nomadic, we traditionally used to have a “seasonal round” where we lived in multiple places in a given year to have more access to better food/water sources etc. Being able to travel where you like is a fundamental part of being human, borders restricting that are what’s weird, not the other way around. Restrictions on travel are a relatively new phenomenon. The difference is it was just physically harder to get places 1000 years ago, and that formed its own sort of barrier.

Someone else said that you used to not need ID to even fly before TWA800, I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that you could walk up to the gate when I was a kid. And why should you need an ID? Tracking every movement of every person doesn’t grant any sort of security to anyone.

You need paperwork when you enter and exit the US. You need paperwork when you purchase or rent a vehicle or get onto a plane. I've never been to Europe, but it sounds like traveling between EU countries is the same as traveling between US states. The borders are there for tax and law enforcement purposes.

You shouldn’t. All that paperwork is a recent invention. You should be able to live and go wherever you want to. I cannot see why this is so hard for people to understand. Why should the state have the right to tell you where you can go? If you’re violent or a criminal or something, convict the person, but crossing an imaginary line without permission shouldn’t be illegal.

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