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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is

Lots of countries have this circularity, including Continental ones with ID systems, and I think it's an intentional anti-immigrant measure.

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For Spain at least, most banks have foreigner accounts you can open with a passport, and convert into a normal account once you have local id later. It's a mildly unusual setup (and a bit confusing when you're new) but it's pretty widely available and it's not a significant blocker. There's plenty of other challenges and structural disadvantages as an immigrant, but this one at least isn't too bad.

If anything, there's really a big advantage to it for the banks - most locals already have banking, immigrants are the one market where you can get new customers without having to push them past the effort/laziness of switching from their existing setup.

It is not a problem to open a bank account with a foreign passport in the UK, and most banks have accounts for those who've just moved to the UK. Hundreds of thousands of people move to the UK every year...

However, you also need proof of address to open a bank account. Which someone moving to the UK won’t have yet. This limits their options of bank accounts.

Which has no relation to Digital IDs whatsoever... and again most banks have accounts that cater for this situation.

Allow me to repeat myself:

> This limits their options of bank accounts.

Now this:

> Which has no relation to Digital IDs whatsoever

Other countries use their ID systems for exactly this purpose, so I don't see how this has "no relation."

Absolutely, it’s a major problem. I would think this system needs to hand out ID cards to everyone who needs one (student, work visa, alongside NI number, etc.) to break that loop.

For a while the UK had the stupid situation where there was a high-security biometric identity system, but only for immigrants, and one of the things you did as part of the process of becoming a citizen was the requirement to hand back or destroy the ID.

(this of course tells us where all the ID pressure is coming from: voters want an identity system that can be weaponized against immigrants and The Other.)

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