Recent immigrants have difficulty opening accounts for a similar reason - only US credit counts. Political activists are also often denied accounts out of an abundance of caution on the bank's part, e.g. with the Occupy Wall St protests.
Especially if someone is from out-of-state, good luck rebuilding that cache of ID again. It requires nominal payments and some sort of starting point of documentation. Sometimes it's chicken-and-egg with the DMV.
The first step usually involves procuring a birth certificate from the correct jurisdiction. Good luck if you're an immigrant from, say, a small village in Latin America.
There are whole services and ministries that help people with obtaining ID. I really appreciated that fact. If you're an addict or mentally ill or raised in poverty or abuse, you're gonna have trouble calmly navigating bureaucracies, for sure. It helps to have a tour guide alongside who can coach you through it.