Basically extortion to continue the absurd, ineffective security theater.
Showing this was not about security at all.
It never was
One could argue surveillance and tracking is about security. They'd be wrong. But they could argue that.
That's absolutely about security. Just not yours. There's a lot of people whose financial security is at risk if they can't sell that data.
Well, it's never been about security, it's about surveillance. But it is reasonable to assume that REAL ID is their most efficient way to track travelers, and if you make them use their less efficient methods of tracking, they'll offset the difference by charging you directly.
Is it that uncommon to have a passport in the US? That's basically part of the common ID paper you'd have here.
Yes. We can travel over 3000 miles and still be in the same country with about every climate. Meanwhile for a family of 4 it would cost almost $700 to get passports and involve waiting weeks. Then flying say Seattle to Paris for instance would cost about $3000 before actually doing anything there. This is in addition to the $300-$400 spent every 5-7 years on normal identity documents that you need for other purposes. This cost varies substantially state to state.
Meanwhile families here are facing drastically escalating costs especially housing and medical.
Compare that to a European who could travel 100 km on the train and be in another country.
Americans have both increased dis-incentives and less incentives to travel internationally compared to Europeans.
for a family of 4 it would cost almost $700 to get passports
You lost me there for a moment. In France, a biometric passport costs 86 € (~$100) for 18+ people, 42 € (~$49) for kids between 15-17, and 17 € (~$20) for people younger than 15. It lasts 10 years for adults, and if you renew your national ID card and passport at the same time, you only pay for one (ID card alone is 25 €, ~$29).
$700 for a family of 4 sounds insane. But if there's no incentive, I guess I get it. I basically kept using my passport for a few decades instead of having an ID card, so it feels more natural to me.
Compare that to a European who could travel 100 km on the train and be in another country.
We don't need a passport to go to most other European countries, fortunately.
I mean EU citizens can also travel similar distances in the schengen zone without a passport and just an ID card.
Does it cost $3000-$5000 for a family of 4 to go anywhere you would need one and require the family to shell out an extra $700 when half the population is living hand to mouth?
No a passport is about 50 Euros if you have time to wait 6 weeks for it to be made. And you need ot as soon as you leave the EU, so Africa would be one area for example, should be aroubd 800-1000 Euros.
Now I wonder, don't you need a passport for south and central america?
Title leaves out "or passport."
In a push to get you to think you must have a Real ID, I've noticed the media constantly leaves out or minimizes the fact that a passport is sufficient to get you through an airport or any other place a Real ID is required.
So no extra fee of you have a passport.
I've always just considered a passport to be a Real ID™.
From the U.S. Department of State website: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/passports/passports-realid.html
The U.S. passport book and passport card are both REAL ID compliant.
You know some dumb shit TSA is gonna not understand that part.
A passport is a really good thing to have, and lasts much longer than a Real ID state license. It ends up costing like $13/yr and it opens up the whole world to you. It blows my mind that on;y 50% of US citizens ever bother getting one.
Well over half of us live paycheck to paycheck and traveling is exorbitantly expensive. Especially international travel.
It sucks being broke.
Ding ding ding- the commenter your replying to must not be poor to think buying something you cannot use is a good idea 😂😭
Many citizens don't leave their state. Plenty of them are hand to mouth and can't afford groceries. Even local travel is a luxury to some, so I can understand why they might not have the desire to go through the process and pay for the passport, not to mention that many people don't know their SSN or have their birth certificates.
Don't forget that transgender Americans can't get passports with the correct gender, either.
Man, some of us are annoyed every time we have to drive into town to shop for groceries or go to work. I'm surrounded by nature at home. I don't want to travel. You'd have to B. A. Baracas me to get me on an airplane or boat. I neither need nor want a passport.
Upvoted purely for a-teaming
My real ID is 8 years versus my passport's 10. And cheaper, less hassle to renew, and more convenient to carry. But I do have both.
My state also hasn't offered non-real IDs in several years.
It costs 165 bucks per person or almost $700 for a family of 4. Then they need $3000-$5000 to travel round trip once to a destination in Europe.
Why is europe the only place you're considering travel to? It's a big world out there
I guess I figured on an English language online forum most of the folks here are US and Europe
Because it's romantic.
It costs thousands of dollars to travel to another country from the US.
For some people in some cases, sure. Myself, I traveled in South America for 3 months last year and overall I saved money vs. expenses in the US, even with airfare included. Also, there's probably 100 million Americans that live within a single tank of gas of getting to Mexico or Canada. There are plenty of lower-income Americans, Brits, Aussies, and Germans (to name the big groups) who manage to travel extensively for long periods at very low expense. I've met many of them, and they could make "thousands of dollars" (let's say you're talking about $3,000) last a good three months in many parts of the world. Look for deals, be willing to not get exactly what you want, and be patient, and travel can be (and had been for me) cheaper overall than paying US prices for housing food etc.
Just did a quick search and just to fly to all the european countries and asia I tried were over $1000. South America was $500+. Also, most of us still have to pay rent while we're traveling, we own shit we can't just abandon so it's literally impossible for it to be cheaper to travel and what do you do when you come back to no job?
I have flown to Ireland, Britain, and Italy for less than $1000 round trip; in some cases as low as $600.
Not to Canada, Mexico, Bahamas, or Caribbean islands.
We still need to go through the process to make sure that we verify who you are
As long as I don't have any weapons it shouldn't matter.
but how else will we track where everyone is all the time
Unless you are using a fake ID and fake credit card then they already have that data?
They know John Smith who lives at 123 Main Street in Bumbfuck, WI and who paid with credit card 1234567890123456 is flying from MSN to LAX on December 1st, 2025 and returning via the same route on December 3rd, 2025.
The RealID requirements are to, theoretically, streamline the process of matching person to face with more standardized ID requirements. Like all ID related legislature there is good and bad there.
But if your focus is on The Man tracking you? This changes nothing unless you are already actively committing fraud at MANY levels.
neat. there is no reason they even need an id. do you need one to gain access to the highways?
So is this just legal way to bribe the TSA
It would only make sense if it was a one time fee, and you got your ID as a result.
We also know it’s not about security, or you couldn’t fly without one.
We know it’s a cash grab because they’re counting on a “built-in” amount of flyers who won’t have or will refuse to get ID with privacy issues. If, by some anomaly, more or all flyers acquire the ID, then we’d see maintenance fees added and the fee itself increased to maintain revenue certainty - but who are we kidding, those things will eventually happen anyways.
I never got one because my license expired during covid and i didn't have a recent bill/bank statement (and I had no intention of walking into a DMV at that time) fortunately i do have a passport that i plan to renew as soon as it expires, but my passport is supposed to be for international travel, not domestic.
it wasn't that long ago that you only needed a birth certificate to travel to the caribbean or a border country. this is getting out of hand.
I use my passport for domestic travel almost always. I come from a small state so it's just easier than showing the TSA agent a type of license they see maybe a couple of a day and don't know how to read. Never had an issue.
I paid for a real id license when they were first available in my state, and I’ve paid for a renewal. I disagree with the surveillance society they enable but I’m also a realist who wants to travel conveniently.
But I’ve still never gotten one. When it comes down to it, actually getting a real id license requires taking a day off work and waiting in line at the Registry …… whereas I can renew a standard license online and have a few years left on my passport
One of the many ways RealID has been a fiasco is RMV/DMV’s not staffing up to support it
While this is ridiculous. The original requirement date for a real id was 2008. It has been 20 years since real id was passed. You have had 20 years to get one.
Dude it was hard enough for my wife to get a new ID (not REAL) when we moved from RI to MA.
I do all the bills and handle all the finances. My credit was better (now we are about equal) and so all the utilities and most the credit cards are in my name. Not to mention most of them are paperless.
At the time, I think she was also still on a cell phone plan with her siblings.
So, like, absolutely no official-enough mail coming to our house to her name. And they need 2.
What, exactly, is the purpose of an ID, and why does it need my SSN and two pieces of mail? How does that identify me, as a person, any more than a supporting document like an existing US Passport? If I qualified for a US Passport, why the hell do I need so much more on top of that for just a state issued ID.
The whole thing is a scam to bully minorities and put an additional burden on traveling for low-income families. I wonder how many people are missing flights to some important and unexpected event (i.e. a funeral) because they never fly and never had a reason to get a REAL ID.
For that matter, I'd really like to know what TSA gets out of a REAL ID that they don't get out of a regular license, for domestic travel? They don't care about my proof of residence, they only care that the name matches the boarding pass and the face, and isn't Islamic or otherwise off-white.
I mean, at this point we’ve known it was coming for like 20 years now - really no excuse to not have one.
My excuse was I didn't want a federal ID card. Not under a democrat and especially not under Trump.
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