[runako]

Since others are not saying it, enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.

(Non-US people note that this is likely a major difference between the US and your country. The US does not compulsorily provide proof of citizenship to its citizens that can be used at places where one is typically asked to prove one's citizenship.)

Bessent notes here that Real ID would not be considered valid ID for this purpose, which sounds like it will have the same problems as the SAVE act. This could mean debanking anyone who has changed their name and does not have a notarized copy of the name change certificate, and most people who do not drive.

(I am not sure how it would handle minors, who generally do not have any photo ID. Would they have to come in to provide ID when they turn 18?)

The underlying idea is fine, but it creates problems when combined with the reluctance to issue any kind of national ID.

[pjc50]

> enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship

Yes, that is obviously the intention of this system.

[JumpCrisscross]

> that is obviously the intention of this system

I'm genuinely unsure which way the partisan tilt would lean on American citizens who get unbanked.

[ryandrake]

I don't even think it's about partisan tilt anymore. This administration's M.O. is raw chaos, havoc, and just this low-level randomized churn that keeps us all conditioned to believe that nothing in government works deterministically anymore.

[bediger4000]

If they don't have documentation, are they citizens?

[JumpCrisscross]

> If they don't have documentation, are they citizens?

Yes. As OP said, "anyone who has changed their name and does not have a notarized copy of the name change certificate, and most people who do not drive." Note that the first category includes many married women.

[pjc50]

It is very, very important to the national psyche of both the UK and the US that the answer to this question can be "yes".

[josteink]

Can you for an outsider expand on this argument. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but why is that?

[TheCoelacanth]

> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

This is part of the US constitution. There's no "if they have proper documentation" qualification.

[runako]

If the US Constitution is to have force as the core document foundational to the governance of the US, it is important for its clear text to have the force of law.

An executive agency creating new requirements for citizenship has the effect of overriding the Constitution, which brings into question what are the controlling documents for the country.

[pjc50]

> which way the partisan tilt would lean on American citizens who get unbanked.

Obviously the court of Fox public opinion would examine their social media to determine if they're woke or Hispanic before deciding this.

[WesolyKubeczek]

Catch-22 lives on.

You are required to prove your citizenship to the government (by proxy of your bank or otherwise). The government lacks a unified document of identity which would by law act as a proof of citizenship, and reserves its right to call any other document it is issuing to be “insufficient”.

[derbOac]

Yeah I don't think people are really fully appreciating the scope of this, because it means people would essentially have to have a passport to open a bank account.

It's very dark. I tend to be libertarian about these things and feel like it's none of the government's business. Get a warrant and do your investigations if you want to prove someone is a foreigner up to no good. There is no real problem unless you're xenophobic or racist.

So I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all. This is a step further though, by putting an administrative and financial burden on people to have a bank account.

The fact this is normal in other places in the world doesn't make it ok to me either — two wrongs don't make a right. And in any event many other places are more socialized than the US, so there isn't the same kind of burden on many places as there would be in the US. It would be one thing if the administration were bending over backwards to provide public healthcare, expand education and public research, but they're doing the opposite.

[runako]

> I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all

I gave you a shout out! :-P

> the reluctance to issue any kind of national ID

Americans have tended to resist this kind of surveillance (when done by the government). Honestly, because it's not necessary. It doesn't make sense to tax 350 million people when DOJ usually doesn't even go after the known big fish. Or when companies can openly violate e.g. money transfer laws at vast scale until they get rich enough to get the laws changed in their favor.

This feels like the kind of thing that will blow up if they implement it and then have to be kicked down the road forever, like RealID. Old people know that the initial RealID deadline was before Barack Obama's election.

[xtiansimon]

> “Bessent notes here that Real ID would not be considered valid ID for this purpose…”

The NYS DMV website shows a birth certificate is required (or passport) for a RealID as proof of birth date.

Is it not valid for proof of citizenship because the dmv doesn’t look at the birth certificate expressly for citizenship? A missing checkbox, then?

[dmitrygr]

  > any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.

Do you have a citation for "any number" being high?

[runako]

Generally will leave as an exercise for the reader.

But immediately one can say that most minors will not have the requisite picture ID because they do not drive and we are not required to carry picture ID (this rollout would be touch more people than the requirement that drivers carry ID). So as of right now, most minors in the US cannot prove citizenship under the criteria Bessent is suggesting (yes, the country should be debating this).

Let's call it all the people under 15 so we don't get the "akshully learner's permit" folks objecting. The US has ~60 million people in the 0-14 age bracket, apply whatever ratio you want to that for citizens/noncitizens and you are still going to end up with a lot, likely millions, of people.

[dmitrygr]

Minors aren’t allowed to open bank accounts without their parents being on the account. Unless their parents are also in that age bracket, but that’s biologically unlikely

[runako]

You asked who doesn't have the required documentation, I am telling you it's minors. Saying parents are also on the account does not change that as of this moment, those documents do not exist and therefore have to be secured.

> Unless their parents are also in that age bracket

This is irrelevant because the point was to identify a broad population that currently does not have the relevant documentation. That's people 0-14.

[stuffn]

> Since others are not saying it, enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.

I didnt have all the documents available for my Real ID which has quite the requirements. In the limit, at least as many as any other citizenship proofing task. We can assume the greatest difficulty would be for the homeless.

It took me ~15 minutes on the social security admin website to get a card ordered to me because mine is lost somewhere in a safe. I had it sent to my house, a PO box, homeless shelter, or any other location would work too. Can be done via a library if you're homeless. Zero excuse.

It took me ~20 minutes to figure out which hospital I was born at and get a copy of my birth certificate shipped to me. See above. Likely marginally more difficult for a homeless person. Not terrible difficult though if you're not so cracked out you don't remember even the state in which you were born. Again, zero excuse.

It took me ~30 seconds to find a document to prove my current residency. Trivial for a homeless person as well. Zero excuse.

Again, in the limit, the government should provide an easier way to do this. But the pearl clutching over the difficulty is to vastly overstated.

This is simply a fantastic excuse to not require citizenship for yet another thing. Something absolutely unheard of in other western countries. I'm beginning to think all of this avoiding proof of citizenship has an ulterior motive.

[runako]

This is not pearl-clutching.

The point is that there are hundreds of millions of consumer bank accounts in the US, and it's not clear that Treasury appreciates the turmoil they are proposing. The country has not had a debate over this, it sounds like it might just drop out of the sky one day and create unnecessary chaos.

We can use the rollout of Real ID itself as a gauge. Executives of both parties, and several Congresses, landed on 20 years as an appropriate rollout time to do so smoothly. And that's basically only needed for air travel, which most Americans do not do in a given year.

It's not crazy to ask that a more disruptive change be subject to more scrutiny and deliberation about its rollout.

In your case, everything was straightforward, you already have a license, and your bank is local so you can walk in and show your ID, awesome for you. But over hundreds of millions of people, every edge case will present. (Is it okay for banks to freeze assets of people in hospitals who are unable to perform the necessary steps and present themselves at a bank? Inmates? How are joint accounts handled? What counts as bank account? What happens to money currently held legally here by foreign nationals?)

The one that might affect the most people here: if you have to show ID, presumably the bank has to be able to authenticate it against your person. Which means an in-person visit. This would be bad if you are one of the tens of millions of Americans whose primary bank does not have any branches in their state of residence. I bank at my alma mater's credit union, even though I have not lived in that state for decades. Would I need to travel there to show my ID or have my account frozen?

Again, a bipartisan set of Congresses and Presidents landed on 20 years to rollout when the only real penalty would be some people would not be able to board a plane when they wanted to, without extra scrutiny.

A botched rollout of this could lead to unpredictable financial calamities as rents and other bills go unpaid, etc.

There is simply not an emergency here, we don't have to upend our financial system pretending there is. The ulterior motive here is to preserve the stability of our financial system while making changes.

[estebank]

> It took me ~30 seconds to find a document to prove my current residency. Trivial for a homeless person as well. Zero excuse.

Is this satire?