DMV Rules

[from 9/9/09]

Recently I had the good fortune to visit the Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain proof that I'm an automobile.

Ha! Get it? No, I went there to get my Washington State ID renewed. Proof of identity is issued by the same agency that licenses you to drive. Why not the Department of Fish & Game? Or the Asparagus Commission?

My good fortune actually consisted in the fact that I still had my just-about-to-expire ID, which already established my identity. That meant that I could fully enjoy the show as one after another less fortunate than I tried to get ID without having ID.

That's what I want to talk about today -- the art of getting ID without already having ID. But first, why do we care? Well, we care because it's our job to gripe about all the reasons homeless people stay homeless, and this is one of those. If you're homeless, you are subjected to conditions which can easily cause you to be without ID, due to loss or theft. Then, you can't get regular wage paying work, because you can't show ID. So you are motivated to go to government agencies to re-establish your ID. At which point they say, "We can't give you ID until you prove you are who you say you are." A fan of Kafka is made.

Many Real Change vendors have lost their ID or had it stolen. One was told by the nice man at the DMV he could get ID if he could produce his military discharge papers, so he went to the Federal Building to see about getting the VA to send him a copy. He wasn't allowed into the Federal Building, because he had no ID. After all, he might be a terrorist! I suggested he take off all his clothes for the guards and offer to let them do a full cavity search, so they could be unafraid of him. But that was unrealistic of me, because the law prohibits even naked unarmed potential terrorists from requesting their DD-214's. I knew that much when I made the suggestion, I just wanted to see my friend's reaction to the idea of requesting his own cavity search. Fun times.

My friend was able to get the discharge papers through the mail. He was lucky that was all he needed. While I was at the DMV, one gentleman came in with a pile of papers, including his discharge papers, but was told the pile lacked crucial documents. The nice man behind the counter patiently explained to the gentleman this state's rules for proving identity. The gentleman, rightly, started screaming. The nice man patiently explained again. The gentleman screamed some more. The nice man explained more. And so on, for about an hour, while forty or fifty other clients watched and waited their turn.

You see, they have lists of acceptable documents. There are stand-alone documents, like my just-expiring old ID, and then there are List A documents and List B documents, and some stuff, like, you can have 2 from List A and 1 from List B, or 3 from List B and 1 and a half from List A, or something like that. I don't know, I only heard the nice man explain it 15 times in an hour, and I didn't care 'cause I was good, so I forget.

That's the lesson I take from all of this. I don't have to care because I'm good, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. Everyone who has a secure house and a lock-box with back-up ID pretty much has List A and List B sufficiently covered.

So don't be worrying about the fact that, thanks to fear of terrorists, there are a couple thousand homeless people in King County alone that can't get the jobs and services they need, so they'll stay homeless, including a whole bunch who have honorable discharges, because they fought for all us chickens.