I know brothers who share a passport and driving license, and do just one lot of taxes between them.
Tightening up identify verification laws will further exclude these people, and may be a net loss for the nation.
And why would you live under someone else's identity? Isn't it identity theft?
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps "Europe" to you only refers to some rich Scandinavian countries?
In Eastern Europe ID cards are frequently issued solely on the basis of witness statements, fraud is very common.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of "fraudulently" issued European passports in circulation. If you go walk near embassies in Chisinau, you'll be approached a plenty of people offering to help you procure one.
Even the UK has struggled with this https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58876645
>And why would you live under someone else's identity? Isn't it identity theft?
Because you don't have your own, there are a plenty of Europeans who have never even had a birth certificate (or lost theirs).
Because yours comes with the wrong nationality, a semipermanent black mark that prevents you from seeking normal employment.
I don't think this is a problem at all, the whole concept of borders and citizenships is poisonous.
Of course it's not only Eastern Europe, of course Greece and Italy have struggled with this too.
You have no idea what you are talking about. I am not talking about Cyprus here.
Here's an article describing a small slice of it https://www.vice.com/en/article/akwe34/romania-has-allegedly...
> you might dislike the way its possible to acquire passport
I don't, I firmly believe that this is a good thing.
>Your claim like its s massive problem on the grand scale of things in Europe is propaganda.
I don't claim that it is a problem at all. I'm just saying that you were being ridiculous when you said
> Its time for Americans do the European and developed world thing and use IDs with proper identification methods
Europe is far from having this figured out.
The wider surveillance issue should be addressed with a GDPR equivalent. What bona fide use do they have for knowing my identity and analyzing my individual purchases? None!
FWIW you can usually get the sale prices by asking the cashier to swipe the "store card" or periodically getting a new nym.
Plenty of reasons, some more legit than others, but there are a large number of people in this position.
I really wish that someone would seriously propose a voting reform act which would basically be the national equivalent of “motor voter registration” except for anyone, at no cost, and either with widespread offices or free transportation (to cover the poor, old, blind, etc.). Get rid of every possible excuse for not having ID and then we can clean up so many screwy processes which rely on a patchwork of paperwork to handle different situations, no two agencies with identical requirements.
That’s fairly deep in “the administration doesn’t want to.” territory. Granted, Germany isn’t as sparsely populated as the US in some regions, but for example we have pop-up admin posts. Effectively a bus that comes visit every few weeks, clerks pop up an admin office where you can do all the tasks, including getting an ID card. That’s not unfeasible, even in comparatively sparsely populated regions.
No, it's describing real things which have happened in the U.S. — for example, in 2015 the state of Alabama closed a number of DMV offices in predominantly black counties. They reversed that in 2017 after outcry and some investigations, but it's not like that's a one-time concern which will never go away. Here's a story from last year with similar concerns (note that this doesn't need to be intended maliciously to have an uneven impact):
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
That's why I'd like to avoid the issue entirely by having strong legal protections and guaranteed funding. The kind of pop-up you mentioned would be a great solution in rural cases, as would other possibilities like some kind of shared infrastructure with the post office or other government agencies where you could have a trusted third-party take an official picture and seal all of the provided material, etc. The idea would be to pair a voter ID requirement with a guarantee that ID would be free and easily available to categorically remove this class of concern.
If you want to say that ID documents should be something that's much less painful for individuals to acquire (and should be free!), completely agreed.
But the idea that a modern society can function without a safe identification system is somewhat far fetched to me.
Calling this tax fraud is... I guess true, but kind of odd and silly.
Two people making $X/2 will in almost all cases pay more taxes while receiving fewer benefits than one person making $X. If you wanted to pay fewer taxes, you wouldn't use this scheme except in a few strange edge cases. I don't think the brothers are sharing a passport, a driver's license, and tax filings in order to reduce their tax bill...
(Reading between the lines, since you didn't seem to pick up on it: one of the brothers is an undocumented immigrant. The goal is not tax minimization... the two brothers are paying more taxes while receiving fewer benefits in order to avoid deportation of the undocumented brother.)
Quite sure most people, the vast majority of people would rather this be tightened up just for the fact that they don't want to have others living under their identity.
As for brothers sharing a passport, I doubt that these laws would affect them the same way, especially if they're twins and pass for each other. But then, just because they can do so, doesn't mean that they should.