Finally, the deadline for a real identity card here. On the seventh of May, nearly two years after kicking the box on the road, TSA will finally request travelers to obtain real knowledge – or other compatible forms of identity (more about that later) – on local trips in the United States. It is safe to say that no one is ready for that. TSA is preparing for chaos in airports, and DMV offices throughout the country Reporting the door lines.
As of mid -April, 81 percent of people traveling through TSA checkpoints had real identifiers or other forms of compatible identity, According to the agency. For almost every five passengers, however, enforcement of the deadline on May 7 may serve as a shock. The true identity law was issued in 2005 as part of the enthusiasm of the national security that invaded the country in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and it was supposed to be fully carried out by 2008.
“People will test the delay of travel,” Patricia Mancha, TSA spokesperson, Patricia, TSA, He said CBS news In April. “People have truly planning for this, so TSA will simply apply laws and rules when they are applied.”
It is true that people have years – 20 of them, in fact – to prepare. But the deadline has often been returned to the point that it was possible that a reasonable person would assume that it would happen again. The first deadline of 2008 was delayed due to concerns about privacy and the cost of implementation.
“Most people have no idea what [the REAL ID Act] It revolves around it other than thinking about it as just inconvenience that they are about to confront it in the auto department. ” Fox. “But when the law passed, there was an incredible ideological diversity in the votes of the opposition.”
When a regular driver’s license works as evidence of a person’s identity and residence in a certain case, the real -time driver’s licenses – also works as evidence of the legal status of the person in the United States.
Classes like Electronic Borders Corporationthe ACLUAnd the right conversion American Institute of Institutions (AEI) all opposed the true identity law on the basis that it increases government monitoring capabilities with nothing to protect national security. Critics say the real identifier is a actually national identification card, as it requires a national database linking individual records of each state. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that real knowledge could “facilitate the tracking of data to individuals and bring the government to the life center of every citizen,” while AEI said that the identity “will lead to the erosion of civil freedoms without any effective gains.” In the Trump era, it is also worth noting that illegal immigrants cannot be issued real identifiers, even in the states where they can obtain driver’s licenses. Given the lack of general compliance with the real identity law even among American citizens, there is no reason that lacks a real identity until someone in the country without permission – but the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for deportation without legal procedures, along with the implementation of the real knowledge, still provokes some warning bells.
Despite the retreat of civil freedom groups, the delays were eventually more than ideology. All fifty states It did not provide real knowledge until September 202015 years after the initial legislation entered into force. Congress has pushed the deadline three times since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, recently in 2022, when it was delayed until May 2025-is now.
Chaos does not spread equally throughout the country. A CBS news The analysis found that a handful of states has almost complete compliance with the real identity law: Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Washington, DC. Five other states – Texas, Mississippi, Hawaii, Utah, and Vermont – have compliance rates more than 90 percent.
Elsewhere in the country, people were scrambling for a real identity before the deadline. New Jersey has the lowest rate of compliance in the country, with only 17 percent of the ID issued by the state’s Ministry of Cars (DMV) real identifiers. According to what was reported, people throughout the state and are waiting for hours in a queue to obtain identifiers before the deadline. “Everyone I know is fighting for one,” a Jersey resident He said the New York Times. “You can’t find any, at all.”
According to what was reported, the state is issued 23,000 real identifiers per week and the deployment of thousands of new dates every morning, with some residents examined DMV in the middle of the night to secure an opening. New Jersey also has an “emergency version program” for people who travel within 14 days for the reasons for “life or death”. Illinois, where two-thirds of the population has no real identity-in a similar situation. Illinois DMV has opened a real “Super Center” in Chicago, where 1500 IDs are released daily.
For a real identifier, you need documents that show your full legal name, birth date and social security number. You also need to provide two valid guides for the title and prove your legal status in the United States. Unlike regular driver’s licenses, real knowledge has a little gold or black star in the upper right corner. (In California, the symbol is small with a star inside.)
But everything is not lost for travelers who still lack a real identifier. Tsa It will also accept Passports, green cards, tribal identifiers, good military identifiers, and trusted traveler cards such as global entry issued by the Ministry of Internal Security, “improved” identifiers, or security cards issued by some countries and other forms of identity. Travelers who do not have any of the above will be subjected to additional offers.
A TSA spokesman said in a Ask me recently On Reddit, “But I know this process may take great time, so you will need to reach the airport early.”
In other words: anticipate long lines, chaos, even frustration and confusion more than usual at TSA checkpoints on May 7 – and perhaps for a few months after that.
