For fellow Americans living in cities where ICE is active, many people, especially those of Hispanic descent, are already carrying around passports on their persons at all times because they’re rightfully afraid of being forcibly disappeared or deported to some random South American country.
A passport card can be obtained for $30 from the Department of State. It is considered exactly equivalent to a passport within the US, but it’s the size of a credit card. It is a valid travel document for land and sea travel within North America and the Caribbean. It also counts as a Real ID. The card is good for ten years.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html
Do not do this if you are transgender or have an X gender marker. They will cancel your passport and tell you to apply for a new one with your sex assigned at birth.
What a time to be alive.
Apparently ICE doesn’t have to look at it.
If you have to prove you have rights then no one has rights.
YSK if ICE thinks you’re too brown, they’ll just say yours is fake and deport you anyway. It’s already happened to US citizens.
Deadset. Which moron actually thinks mexican-looking peoples with actual passports are being approached on the streets and let go??
A REAL ID is also valid proof of citizenship. ICE clearly does not care.
REAL IDs are not proof of citizenship. They’re proof that you had legal status at the time of their issue.
Would be a useful tip in a world where ICE follows the law.
You’re trolling right? No one should need to unlawfully identify themselves at the bequest of nazis.
What should be is not the same as what is.
Don’t comply
This is a difficult thing to respond to. I (Asian, US citizen) have actually been stopped by ICE because I live in Portland, Oregon. I gave them my passport card and they said, “okay, you can go”. I then cussed them out, saying “You blind motherfuckers, you aren’t even good at being racist; do I look Mexican to you?”
They told me to fuck off. And I did, after giving them the middle finger and calling them “fucking Blackshirts”. But this interaction accomplished what I wanted it to: it (1) caused aggravation, (2) shows them that they aren’t welcome and (3) that their presence is not appreciated. In hindsight, I should have stayed and argued to waste their time.
If I had just refused to do anything the whole time, the most likely outcome was that I would have been taken to the ICE facility in downtown Portland and accosted for a few hours, accomplishing nothing.
What IS is that they don’t care about little pieces of paper in your wallet.
It is a valid travel document for land and sea travel within North America and the Caribbean.
The way you’ve phrased it sounds quite dystopian.
Jesus
Just FYI - outside of the US bubble - an identity card is standard in most countries.
The most common identity document in the US is the state identification card (“State ID”), which also doubles as a driving license for those licensed to drive. Pretty much everyone has a State ID. While a State ID card is valid proof of identity, it isn’t proof of citizenship because the Department of Motor Vehicles will issue one to anyone, even those without legal immigration status. They did not previously ask about immigration status when you are applying for one (that changed fairly recently to comply with the “Real ID” standards for the newest generation of cards), and old cards are typically good for 10 years.
The passport card is uncommon because the State ID is sufficient for most purposes, didn’t (used to) require burdensome proof of citizenship to apply for, and could be easily obtained from any DMV office. And if you have a car, which is most Americans, you need a driving license which is a State ID anyway.
Well I didn’t know about that before, so thank you for the information :)
Your system sounds a bit complex when compared to the German one. For comparison here in Germany we basically have 3 important documents:
- The ID card that you get as a citizen. You can use it inside the country for basically all govermental buisness or to travel freely in the EU/Schengen area.
- The more powerful (and expensive) passport that you usually only needed when travelling abroad
- Drivers license - that you can also get when you’re not a citizen
So if you’re an immigrant/not a citizen you basically can’t have an ID card or passport and get a temporary residence card instead.
Your system does sound more straightforward.
Unfortunately various groups have historically opposed changes to make it simplier in the us ( some for dumb reasons some for valid reasons).
The main issue is almost all our documents are effectively voluntary…
Birth certificate is the one you’re most likely to have, managed by the state (people who don’t give birth in hospitals sometimes skip this, which makes everything harder in life)
The parents should also file for a federal social security card using the birth certificate, but again some people skip this and it makes their kids lives hard.
Most people who can drive will get a state issued drivers license at 16, the most recent standard has a label to identify if you are a citizen or not (proven by showing your birth certificate or social security card when getting the id)
All male citizens are required to register with the government at 18 for the draft, but I don’t recall getting any id from it - but mentioning it as the only time I think citizens are required to do something for the feds because they are citizens, the other mandatory federal item is paying taxes, but residents also pay taxes.
If you want to vote you register with the city / county, prove citizenship to them, and get issued a voter id, and about half the country doesn’t do this.
I don’t know the exact percent, but most Americans don’t have a passport. Traveling between States is cheaper than internationally, and within a half day or day long flight you can reach whatever vacation activity you’d want.
There are a bunch of less common id cards granted by state governments, such as weapon carry ids, hunting permits, a dedicated state id card, etc. But these aren’t standardized and not every state accepts other state ids fully (in particular the weapon permits are often not accepted). And a common issue comes up when voting laws require id because the politicians often will choose ids that their voters already have and hope enough opposition doesn’t get that form by the election to make the election easier (North Carolina Republican party lost a lawsuit recently because there were emails where they specifically asked which ids their voters were more likely to have then tried to make only those the accepted ids).
In practice the federal government uses the social security number as a federal id, but it’s a terrible bad idea that has caused many issues and we passed a law requiring government agencies stop doing it
I wish it was simplier, but most people don’t care and any discussion of changing it has people panic that their id won’t be valid for an upgrade, fearing they would have to spend a frustrating amount of time and money finding or replacing their original birth certificate in order to get a federal id or deal with a slow process (I’ve known people who had to wait in line multiple work days to get state ids issued, although that was rare, I only stood in line 2 hours).
Probably more information than you wanted, but it’s complex and I just kept going lol
Yeah you know the system’s fucked when even a German is calling it complicated.
It’s easy to explain when I phrase it like this:
- The passport card has the same function as the German national ID card, proving both nationality and identity. It can be used for land travel within North America just like how as a German you can drive to the Netherlands or Poland with only your national ID card and no passport.
- Driving licenses in the US also function as identity documents, but not proof of nationality. It is possible to obtain a non-driving license version that serves only as identification if you don’t drive.
- The passport book is the same across both countries. It is used for travelling abroad and it proves both nationality and identity.
Edit: In America, all three documents are technically optional. While you could choose to never apply for a State ID or passport book/card, or never renew your documents when they expire, and it wouldn’t technically be illegal, you would find it difficult to go through your daily life because you wouldn’t be able to do anything like get a job, open a bank account, buy train/plane tickets, get insurance, or register/drive a car without some form of ID.
You should know that you are not required to identify yourself to the gestapo. This post is in un-American.
The way to combat these idiots is everyone refusing to show identification .
Thank you. Papers, Please isn’t the ending we need to run to. They can’t treat us like criminals cause they feel like it
I thought that you did within 100m of an airport
While I agree with the sentiment behind your post, this is like waving a copy of the Weimar constitution to the Gestapo.
i dont get what anyone’s so worried about, as a straight white man cops don’t seem to give me any trouble when i present my papers
“YSK you should comply with authoritarian governments”
Yall are so fucking cooked.
Watch the comments advocating for resisting the fascist takeover and see the excuses and downvotes pour in.
So cooked.
Fucking stewed.
Lmao it’s been shown multiple times that even with a passport shown to ICE they’ll just call it fake if they want to abduct you.
Yup I was going to comment the same. The physical passport might be useful after the fact once you’re in ICE holding being processed after x amount of hours/days. But then again at that point they would look you up in their systems so having the physical passport in your wallet may end up being a waste of time anyway.
The fact is if the ICE goon squad you encounter feels like arresting and detaining US citizens they’re going to do it.
And that’s assuming the ICE goons don’t make up charges of assaulting them or similar, in which case I’m not sure if those US citizens being charged get released with a future court date or are detained indefinitely.
I will absolutely refuse any unlawful order to see my “papers”.
YSK a card in your wallet won’t help you much when an ICE agent points a gun at your head and tells you your passport looks fake, without even looking at it.
If this form factor for ID isn’t well known enough for them to know about it, I doubt they received training on its existence.
Which means having this card will make them assume it’s fake by default. “That’s not what a US passport looks like!” Thereby increasing their deluded suspicions, rather than reducing them.
The problem is not lack of training. This isn’t a “whoopsie-poopsie”. They’re doing it on purpose and if someone looks brown enough they get kidnapped. With luck they get released later.
They already did this to people with Real ID drivers licenses, which have the same requirements to acquire as a passport.
I doubt they received training
on its existence.
The main advantage is that it’s a redundant form of citizenship ID. ICE can always say it is fake and confiscate it, but then you have your passport book waiting at home for your lawyer to take to the detention center to get you out (once they find out where they took you).
Most Americans don’t own a passport in the first place.
Anyone who fails the “Peter Griffin in a Fez” test needs to get one. And double up on the card and book.
Because it doesn’t matter where you were born, or what the facts are. ICE is targeting people who they believe don’t belong here, based on how they look and sound. Having the card on your person is no guarantee, but maybe it will work if they are in a good mood.
It’s sad that this is what it has come to in America, of all places, but here we are.
Yeah, but you’re at least a little more likely to survive.
Apparently they don’t even bother with that now, they’ll go after anyone
Are you actively encouraging people to not seek protections against a fascist regime just because it wouldn’t be 100% effective?
How in the world did you draw that conclusion? I’m merely pointing out that they’re discriminating on skin color alone, but that wasn’t an advocacy against a passport card.
Maybe armbands with star of david would help like it did during Nazi regime?
Ah, so you are trying to get people killed.
Yes, because we all know citizens don’t get shot in the face while driving and just existing. Identification would really help. We’re way past the compliance stage.
Still doing the or nothing argument. ICE has actively deported us citizens. These people might have had a better chance of arguing at the moment if they’d had this identification. Are you also arguing against vaccines because they don’t make you bulletproof?
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