Places get squirrelly these days about ID. Because I live in Washington state and my kid, soon to be kids, live in Canada, I paid extra to get the "enhanced" ID card that involves proving citizenship and going through a screening. This allows me to cross the border by car but not in a plane.
Yet I have had companies here in Seattle refuse to accept it as ID on the grounds that it isn't a driver's license. I don't drive. The medications I take make it very unwise. It's a state-issued card that is *more* vetted than the standard state driver's license, and by not accepting it as ID they are in violation of the ADA, I would think. Do they care? No. Because they're betting that the people they refuse don't have enough money to hire a lawyer and challenge them.
The same thing happens with other forms of ID all the time. I've seen companies insist on seeing a social security card as part of your ID. I've seen companies insist that a *passport* is inadequate ID, and I've seen bars simply refuse to take out of state ID of any sort. They just point out that they have the right to refuse service, and unless you can prove they're discriminating against a protected class, you're just plain out of luck.
I could also bring up such crimes as walking in a rich neighborhood while black. Sure, eventually the courts will agree that you aren't required to carry identification with you, but meanwhile you will have to deal with arrests, jail, job loss, and so on. The same sort of thing happens with ICE raids. They have it so well-organized that before your family notices you're not home, you're on the bus to Mexico with nothing but what's in your pockets. How are you supposed to defend yourself against the charges?
There's an interesting case right here in Seattle now which appears to hinge on the agents (sloppily) erasing part of a statement to make it incriminate a young man.
http://q13fox.com/2017/02/16/document-shows-key-piece-of-evidence-in-dreamer-daniel-ramirez-medina-case-might-have-been-erased-ice-daca/
So it looks as if ICE may be prone to doing shifty stuff.
The last time this was happening in this state, migrant workers, including the green card holders, stayed away in such huge numbers that the orchard owners ended up hiring prisoners to pick the apple crop at roughly 4 times the cost. Out-of-work people tried to get the jobs but were refused because they had no experience. Or perhaps because they'd expect their legally mandated breaks and other benefits, but experience was the official reason. Either way, when you expand the concept to the other industries that hire a lot of immigrants, you have to hope all the people expecting their jobs to come back are happy with stoop labor, meat packing plants and restaurant kitchens at low wages. It's either that or our food prices jump massively and the restaurant industry collapses.
There. That's a lot of semi-connected bits that have been seething in my head on the whole topic. Read them or ignore them as you see fit.
