How do you differentiate between 'poor with no ID' and someone overstaying a Visa?
The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
41–50 of 90 posts
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the older comment by that same user already acknowledges that.
She didn't have ID when she was evicted which means she had plenty of time to get one. If she had a license/state ID and answered the expiration mailer she would have had one.
No, it means that she went from a situation in which she still had plenty of time to get one into a situation where she suddenly had no time at all anymore.
> If she had a license/state ID and answered the expiration mailer she would have had one.
That assumes she had one to begin with. I know lots of Americans that don't even have a passport or driving license.
Anyway, you're a cold one to stick to your theme of victim blaming, take into account that not everybody is able to navigate the bureaucracy as well as you or I and that there are other factors (for instance: analfabetism) that can land people in very difficult situations which even an expert would have a hard time to reverse.
And in case it wasn't clear to you yet: And it shouldn't be that way, if you're a legal citizen of a country and you lose all your identification due to theft, fire or some other reason and/or you are homeless then your government should go out of its way to help correct the situation. Because it is the decent thing to do.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having to deal with something like this at the same time as being evicted and losing your mother is very sad, but that's not an excuse. It's the perfect excuse. Once you have no registered address it is only a matter of time before you gain the accumulated 'benefits' that come with having no status at all. Essentially you become an un-person, and your life is just about forfeit. [1] I take it that you have not expe…
I was homeless for two years living out of my car. I used a mail forwarding service to maintain proof of residence and get id and stay registered somewhere.
Smart of you to see ahead.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#44Got to keep those poor people away from the polls. It's interesting how the government here - NL - makes it mandatory for those over 14 to have a photo ID of sorts at all times and charges money for those. A government issued ID should be free of charge, especially if it is required by the government to have one, and they set the prices. That's still a lot better than the situation described in the article which seem…
> the situation described in the article which seems to be engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up. It's sad too that it should come to volunteers to correct such situations, you'd think that the government would really like its citizens to be able to take part in society rather than to be pushed even further into the fringes. You'll find that Americans really…
Yes. That explains why Americans give up time, money, effort, and care, to help other Americans back up out of the hole our government does not give a damn if it puts them in.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#45Got to keep those poor people away from the polls. It's interesting how the government here - NL - makes it mandatory for those over 14 to have a photo ID of sorts at all times and charges money for those. A government issued ID should be free of charge, especially if it is required by the government to have one, and they set the prices. That's still a lot better than the situation described in the article which seem…
LOL yeah because DC, where the op-ed is focused, has a 76-6 Democratic to Republican party registration advantage.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up" This seems like a pretty extraordinary claim made pretty casually. What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? It seems much more likely a case of straightforward government dysfunction enabled by all the usual factors that make the government suck at accomplishing things.…
>What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? A theology that holds that god rewards the just and thus the poor must be so because they're wicked and/or a fucked up reading of the phrase "the poor will always be with you" A desire to 'prove' an economic philosophy that the poor brought it on themselves by creating a self perpetuating spiral of doom and then pointing to peo…
Yes. This is why you find people of Christian faith volunteering to...you know what, never mind. I wish I lived in a world as simple as the one you seem to.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#47It isn't cruel, there are legitimate reasons the process is and should be difficult. Document fraud helped the 9/11 attackers get driver's licenses and ID fraud is a major part of many other terror attacks and funding. This is also an identity theft vector, and numerous welfare/tax scams are built on multiple and fake identities.
To paraphrase maxerickson in this thread: the process should be secure, not difficult.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#48How do you differentiate between 'poor with no ID' and someone overstaying a Visa?
Light background check. Validate their fingerprints/photo against database of Visa holders.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#49Got to keep those poor people away from the polls. It's interesting how the government here - NL - makes it mandatory for those over 14 to have a photo ID of sorts at all times and charges money for those. A government issued ID should be free of charge, especially if it is required by the government to have one, and they set the prices. That's still a lot better than the situation described in the article which seem…
Malice seems unlikely. There has to be some way to prove your identity, and people have tried to impersonate others. Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft? EDIT: After thinking it over, I guess identity theft isn't a big concern. It seems pretty unlikely that someone would actively exploit this system to get someone's ID, then their birth certificate, then someho…
I think a distinction between personal malice and systemic malice could be useful here.
Re: The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID
#50I lost my wallet last year and simultaneously needed to get a passport on short notice for a business trip. I borrowed $200 bucks from my dad to pay the expedited passport fee, bought an Amtrak ticket with saved CC information to get to the same-day passport office in Philadelphia, and proved my identity to the passport office with copies of government employee ID cards and my law licenses. Even then I dealt with administrators who didn't realize that the regulations permitted you to get a passport with something other than a driver's license. (I nearly had a breakdown when, after going through the whole rigmarole to get them to issue me a passport without a driver's license, I came back a couple of hours later and they wanted a driver's license to let me pick up my already-printed passport. I was like "look at the f--king passport you're holding, it's got a photo with the same shirt I'm wearing now.") But I did get it, in the end, and getting a new driver's license was easy once I had my passport.
Through the whole thing, I couldn't help but think how Kafkaesque this process is, and what happens to people who don't have responsible parents who still have their birth certificates, or who can loan them money to pay the necessary fees, or who can't afford to pay extra to cut in the line? (And, frankly, what happens to people who aren't blessed with the level of cognitive functioning most of us take for granted, and can't figure out the dense procedures for replacing their ID?) There is nobody in government who is actually out there thinking of whether there is a path through this system for the most vulnerable people; the people who have lost everything. They don't care.