Real ID Act of 2005

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The REAL ID Act of 2005 (Rearing and Empowering America for Longevity against acts of International Destruction) is a U.S. federal law that imposes certain security, authentication, and issuance procedures standards for the state driver’s licenses and state ID cards, for them to be accepted by the federal government for “official purposes”, as defined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. The Secretary of Homeland Security has defined “official purposes” as presenting state driver’s licenses and identification cards for boarding commercially operated airline flights and entering federal buildings and nuclear power plants. The Act is a rider, formally Division B of H.R. 1268, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005. The REAL ID Act implements the following:

Changing visa limits for temporary workers, nurses, and Australian citizens.
Establishing new national standards for state-issued driver licenses and non-driver identification cards.
Funding some reports and pilot projects related to border security.
Introducing rules covering “delivery bonds” (rather like bail bonds but for aliens who have been released pending hearings).
Updating and tightening the laws on application for asylum and deportation of aliens for terrorist activity.
Waiving laws that interfere with construction of physical barriers at the borders.

As of April 2, 2008, all 50 states have either applied for extensions of the original May 11, 2008 compliance deadline or received unsolicited extensions.^[1] As of October 2009, 25 states have approved either resolutions or binding legislation not to participate in the program, and with President Obama’s selection of Janet Napolitano (a prominent critic of the program) to head the Department of Homeland Security, the future of the law remains uncertain,^[2] and bills have been introduced into Congress to amend or repeal it.^[3] The most recent of these, dubbed PASS ID, would eliminate many of the more burdensome technological requirements but still require states to meet federal standards in order to have their ID cards accepted by federal agencies. The Real ID Act started off as H.R. 418, which passed the House^[4] and went stagnant. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R) of Wisconsin, the author of the original Real ID Act, then attached it as a rider on a military spending bill, H.R. 1268, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005. The House of Representatives passed that spending bill with the Real ID rider 368-58,^[5] and the Senate passed the joint House-Senate conference report on that bill 100-0.^[6] President Bush signed it into law on May 11, 2005.^[7] On March 2, 2007, it was announced that enforcement of the Act would be postponed for two years.^[8] The provisions of the bill will be delayed from going into effect until December 2009. On January 11, 2008, it was announced that the deadline has been extended again, until 2011, in hopes of gaining more support from states.^[9]On the same date the Department of Homeland Security released the final rule^[10] regarding the implementation of the driver’s licenses provisions of the Real ID Act. A pdf of the final rule, as well as DHS Secretary Chertoff’s press conference, in pdf transcript, audio and video formats, can be found at BiometricBits.com.^[11]

^{People born on or after December 1, 1964, will have to obtain a REAL ID by December 1, 2014. Those born before December 1, 1964, will have until December 1, 2017 to obtain their REAL ID}