Column: Get ready to wait in line: The Real ID horror show is coming soon to a driver’s license facility near you
People wait at the Secretary of State's driver's license facility in the Thompson Center on March 27, 2019. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
I arrived at the Illinois Secretary of State’s Chicago North offices at 3:45 p.m. Tuesday to update my driver’s license to a Real ID.
Yes, I was early. It’s still more than 11 months before the Transportation Security Administration will refuse to let you on a domestic airline flight unless you have a Real ID-compliant driver’s license (or can show a valid passport or military ID).
But I was also too late. An employee at the door turned me away as soon as I told him why I was there. “There are already 50 people in line for a Real ID, and we won’t be able to process you before closing time” at 5 p.m., he said. “Come back tomorrow.”
The next day I showed up at a little past 10 a.m., carrying the required documents as listed at realid.sos.gov — my passport as proof of my identity, an Internal Revenue Service W-2 form to prove my Social Security number, a couple of recent utility bills to establish my legal residency and my current driver’s license as “proof of signature.” Other evidence can qualify, including a certified birth certificate as proof of identity, or Social Security card as proof of SSN, but it’s easy to imagine people with less organized lives than mine having trouble assembling the paperwork.
The crowd that morning wasn’t large. Still, it took me about 90 minutes to complete the process of getting a new photo taken, waiting for a clerk to scan my documents, paying the $5 fee to upgrade an existing license and securing a temporary Real ID card to use until the actual one arrives in the mail.
I can only imagine how long the waits are going to be in the weeks before the deadline hits, when the 58% of Americans who don’t hold passports realize they won’t be able to fly on scheduled or emergency trips without going through this unnecessary process.
Yes, unnecessary.
Real ID is a solution in search of a problem.
The federal Real ID Act of 2005 was part of a series of legislative moves aimed at fighting global terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in which the hijackers used fraudulent driver’s licenses to board the doomed airplanes.
The shift to a more comprehensive, secure identification system was supposed to take effect in 2008, but deadlines were extended and extended again in large part because of controversy over the idea. In 2007, the Illinois General Assembly passed a joint resolution calling for the repeal of the Real ID Act on the grounds that it creates a de facto national identity card that threatens privacy interests, that it will be part of broadened efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and that it will burden the states with the costs of implementation.
Lawmakers in 25 other states ultimately registered similar or even stronger objections.
Barack Obama, who opposed the Real ID Act when he was U.S. senator, did little to enforce it when he was president from early 2009 to early 2017. And why would he have? The post-9/11 enhanced airport security measures were working just fine.
From Sept. 11, 2001, until today, with domestic airline passengers being allowed to board with ordinary driver’s licenses, there have been zero hijackings.
So it was more than baffling when, in June 2017, President Donald Trump’s then-Homeland Security director John Kelly announced that Real ID “is a critically important 9/11 Commission recommendation that others have been willing to ignore, but I will not. I will ensure it is implemented on schedule — with no extension — for states that are not taking it seriously."
Why now? And why, if a passport will still be good enough to board an airplane, do Real ID applicants have to show several additional documents in order to get their special cards? Even though I have a passport, I don’t want to bother extracting it from our fireproof safe, or risk forgetting it at home or losing it on the road every time I travel.
Is this a stealth weapon in the fight against illegal immigration, or a genuine safety measure?
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to my request for comment.
The Trump administration’s no-fly deadline is Oct. 1, 2020. This date is so close to the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election, and so certain to cause interminably long lines at driver’s license facilities, and tens of thousands of headaches and fits of pique at airports, that I’d put money on another delay.
In the meantime, though, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office has reportedly earmarked up to $15 million for the transition. Those costs will include TV and radio advertising warning the public about the woe that will befall those who don’t heed the call to go spend hours of their lives that they’re never going to get back obtaining a needless and personally invasive prop for security theater.
Real ID is a real bad idea.
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