I find it a credible claim. There was a story a few years back which made the rounds that ... turned out to be a case of fraud.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
https://www.inquirer.com/news/mark-damico-johnny-bobbitt-kat...
That said, given frictions of obtaining ID and necessity of having same, I could well believe that this is an issue.
I ran into a guy online that couldn't obtain an ID, period. The only form of ID he had was a driver's license. His doctor pulled it (legitimately, but needlessly--there was no question he was incapable of driving) leaving him with nothing. Where he lives that left one option--get a birth certificate. The application must be signed--something he's no longer capable of doing. The only other route would be to show up in person at the right office--multiple states away, a trip that would be medically ill-advised.
Note that he's educated and not poor, this is purely a problem of the system not handling the oddball cases. That state needs to be clobbered with a clue-by-4, if you pull a driver's license you should issue the person a non-driver's ID!
We have also run into a problem. When my wife was naturalized a hyphen got inserted in her name on her naturalization certificate, it wasn't noticed at the time. Almost everything is in her name as intended but social security saw the hyphen and would not relent. Even after we legally changed her name to rid it of the hyphen they were digging in their heels on changing the records. At this point we *think* the Real ID stuff is going to work, but the virus interfered. For the occasional place that won't accept her expired ID we use her passport card. (She doesn't drive, there's no issue of driving on an expired license.)
- It’s Federal law.
I don’t know why people keep forking over money for state ID. It’s a state government scam.
Err, no they don't. At least not with any of the IDs I've gotten in California for the past several years....
Then a DL itself is another $40. A non-driving ID is like $30, although there's discounts depending on age and income.
Scraping together the required documentation for proving her address was problematic. I set up the utilities, I'm the one that deals with them, they're just in my name. She doesn't like dealing with that sort of stuff and at the time most of it was done her English (she learned her first word of English at 43) would have added needless complexity.
Even the property records are problematic on that--we put our house into an estate-planning trust. The correct titling of the property has the trust and then both of our names--but the system only *displays* two lines. Thus it shows the trust and then my name, hers gets omitted.
Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money, a significant expense for lower-income Americans. The combined cost of document fees, travel expenses and waiting time are estimated to range from $75 to $175.
The travel required is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation. In Texas, some people in rural areas must travel approximately 170 miles to reach the nearest ID office.