June 20, 2017
Being Legal in New Mexico
I was
in town recently, trying for the fifth time to renew my driver’s
license. Rejected, again. On the first attempt, I learned that NM has
decided to up the ante for regular folks, and you can no longer go into the NM
MVD office and get a driver’s license based on the fact that you simply needed
to renew the old one. New Mexico was one of the states, in a frenzy of
political correctness and deference to illegal aliens, that passed a new law to
give driver’s licenses to people they knew were in the state illegally.
But in
the aftermath, they had fights about it in the state legislature about how to
make up for the debacle they had created by causing all New Mexico drivers licenses to be
suspect – because the TSA would no longer recognize them as legal identification
for purposes of boarding a plane. These legislators, in an even more brilliant
move, decided to fix it by making all of the legal citizens of New Mexico prove
to them that we are legal citizens. They still give our old licenses to
illegals, but now us regular citizens have to prove our citizenship, and that
we are not criminals, in order to get a driver’s license that will qualify for
identification so we can ride on planes, trains, and other public
conveyance. And apparently, the illegals do not have to prove squat to get
a driver’s license.
I came
home from that unsuccessful but informative mission, and dug through my files,
using the information sheet the lady gave me, and collected even more stuff
than she needed to prove who I was. Then I made three empty trips with
papers in hand, on weekdays, during business hours, to get my nearly expired
license replaced, with her out of the office for no explained reason – just
papers posted on the door saying the office was closed on that day and several
other dates, some in print from a printer, some added by hand with a sharpie,
as if in afterthought. I managed to hit three of those days, as it turned
out, and the three trips were each 70 miles. Oh well, we are used to that in
these parts.
On my
fifth foray I took the following information about myself:
- U. S. passport
- Social Security card
- Birth Certificate
- Marriage License (this,
as she explained, was to legitimize my social security card if my name had
changed, and it had)
- A bank statement
(required)
- A utility bill
- Property tax bill from my
county
- Current driver’s license
Upon
presentation of said documents I was rejected. Reasons:
- My old social security
card did not have the same legal name as the passport, and even though I
had the marriage license to show legal reason for it –- she said I would
have to go get a new social security card. As if it is easy to get a
new social security card. When I remarried in 1996 my husband took it
upon himself to get me a new social security card. They misspelled my
name, and it took me five years to get it cleared up – the social security
people did not notice there were two of me with the same number and
remarkably similar names. It took several phone calls and two trips
to their office, 150 miles away to finally get it straightened
out. So, where is that new card? I don’t know and have been
afraid to start the process over. In my experience, it is not easy to
get a new social security card.
- I tried to switch from
the passport to the birth certificate for one of my documents. She
said it would not work now that I had already used the passport. She
was not interested in the birth certificate. Admittedly, I could have
misunderstood this part of the lady’s explanation, but she said that since
I first handed her my passport for ID instead of the birth certificate,
the social security card had to match it exactly. Still scratching
my head about that. I suppose this only happens to women, since we
are the ones who change our names – so I guess this only happens to half
of us.
- The utility bill did not
have my street address, just my mailing address, so it did not qualify,
(street addresses in rural NM did not exist until the big push to give
everyone a street address in the wake of 9/11). So none of my old accounts
include my street address, and my street address is not my
legal mailing address (the local post office pushed back when street
addresses started showing up instead of the PO box numbers, and refused to
deliver mail that did not have the legal mailing address). She
suggested I contact my electric company and have them change my address,
so she could use it for purposes of identification – as if that would be
no problem and was a reasonable suggestion.
- My old driver’s license,
which could have been my ID, also did not qualify, since it could have
been given to an illegal.
- At this point, my head
was beginning to throb.
- My bank statement also
did not have my street address, same reason as the utility bill. In fact,
my bank and electric company have been the same since 1972, and my
accounts with them active the whole time. My street address did not
exist until 2005.
- The tax bill also did not
have my street address in the mailing address, but did have a legal
description of my land, along with my street address in the description --
that does not count, she said. It must include the street address in
the mailing address that was used to send it to me to be valid as proof
that I live in New Mexico.
- According to her, I had
nothing to prove I lived in New Mexico. I cannot help but wonder if
it would be okay for me to not file and pay taxes here.
At
each explanation, and each rejection, she swallowed hard and apologized, and I
knew it was not her fault. But I admit to a bit of a meltdown, telling her
I was livid, that I knew it was not her fault, but that I had been in Hidalgo
County for 45 years now, and in New Mexico my whole life, and that I was being
asked to prove it to an agency that knows it full well already. She said
she understood, but there was nothing she could do. Perhaps I could have
been kinder. She is not my enemy.
It
occurred to me when I left, steaming, that she could also have looked on her
MVD records and found that my first driver’s license was given to me in Las
Cruces, NM, at age 15. Pretty unlikely that same license number, with all my
names, under the same number, for the last forty-eight years, did not belong to
the same old, tired New Mexico citizen -- they probably even have all the lousy
pictures of me through all the years on file. I’d like to see the
terrorist that could pull that off…
On a
happier note, I have remembered that she explained, the first time I went in,
that just to operate a car, I can get
a regular license that will not get me on a plane, but is legal to drive with
-- just like the illegals use! Just like my old one. So that is
what I will get! I have a passport for other stuff, and I do not think I
will travel by public conveyance much anymore anyway. The business of
proving I am not a criminal everywhere I go is getting too annoying.
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