REAL ID Goes Into Effect May 7, 2025

REAL ID Goes Into Effect May 7, 2025 - An Explanation For What It Means For You If You Don't Have A REAL ID By that Date

S.E. Gunn PhD

H.R. 418 aka REAL ID Act of 2005 aka Public Law 109-13 followed a unique path to become law. By a House vote of 261-161, REAL ID was approved Feb 10, 2005. Instead of going to the Senate for a vote, then to the President for signature making it law, the House decided to include it within the "must pass" H.R. 1268 funding bill. The Senate passed H.R. 1268 Apr 21, 2005 BUT, they had removed the REAL ID Act. It was re-attached by a "conference report" prior to Congress passing it with a vote of 368-58 on May 10, 2005.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association pointed out that there were no hearings or debate on this legislation. In addition, that by attaching it to a "must pass" spending bill, it did not receive an adequate level of scrutiny for importance and impact. They also claimed this action prevented Democrats from fully participating. I ask were there only 58 Democrats in Congress back then?

Between 2007 and 2009, there were three attempts to recall the REAL ID Act of 2005 were attempted but all failed. 

In 2021, the REAL ID Modernization Act was passed. This act revised the REAL ID Act of 2005. The revision followed the normal procedures and was passed by both House & Senate in 2021. This ended the idea of the 'illegitimacy' of the REAL ID Act of 2025 for with the revision, the entire act was reaffirmed. The President then signed it into law. This act removed the requirement that states keep the documentation you provide verifying your Social Security Number (SSN). However, states MAY require you to show a document that matches your name to your SSN.

The REAL ID Act of 2005 standardizes the information each state collects; forces states to create a database of all driver's licenses and state ID cards they issue; forces states to make their database available to ALL other states; sets rules for providing non-citizens REAL IDs, and gives maximum limits on expiration dates of driver's licenses and/or state IDs

Is the Department of Homeland Security building a national database through this Act?

The  REAL ID Act of 2005 requires STATES to create and maintain both paper and digital records of EVERY driver's license or state ID issued by that state. It DOES NOT create a national database. The Act REQUIRES STATES make their database available to ALL other states. My question to this is: "Is it really "efficient" for EACH state to check every other state's database to see if their REAL ID applicant has been issued a driver's license or state ID in some other state?" I suspect the states will DEMAND an "all the states" database so they only need to check one place to verify applicants. Whether this is done by a snippet of code that automatically searches all the other state databases OR a single national database is created is yet to be seen. 

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