REAL ID rush

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Thursday the 17th of April.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Up first, a deadline, nearly two decades in the making.

Starting May 7th, airport security will begin enforcing the Real ID Act of 2005. After years of delay TSA announced on Friday it’s ready to raise the bar at airport security. But is America REALly ready?

WORLD’s Mary Muncy has the story.

MARY MUNCY: About 45 people stand in line outside of the Department of Motor Vehicles in Asheville, North Carolina.

MUNCY: How long have you guys been standing here?

JAY BURSKI: About an hour

Jay Burski and his wife Lauren are trying to get their Real IDs so they can visit their children out West.

JAY BURSKI: Our son is moving out to New Mexico.

LAUREN BURSKI: So we need to be ready.

State governments and federal agencies have been working for decades to get ready for REAL ID enforcement.

It goes back to the years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, when hijackers exploited weaknesses in American security to turn four commercial airplanes into weapons of mass destruction.

After that, lawmakers considered ways to prevent similar attacks.

JIM HARPER: Dozens, maybe hundreds of different security efforts got underway, and one of them was the idea of strengthening our identification systems in the United States.

Jim Harper is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In the early 2000s, he worked with the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

HARPER: It's plausible that if you knew who everyone was, you'd have a better chance to stop attacks like the September 11 terrorist attacks. That doesn't necessarily bear out.

When Congress considered a bill in 2004 to create federal standards for identification, many lawmakers saw the benefits of being able to identify terrorists before they could act. But Texas Congressman Ron Paul objected.

RON PAUL: So you're registering all the American people because you're looking for a terrorist and all the terrorists are going to do is avoid the law. But we, the American people, have to obey the law. If we don’t we go to prison.

That bill passed anyway and the REAL ID Act soon followed. It set rules for states to create a form of identification that would raise the bar for verifying a person’s identity with documents proving date of birth and legal residency.

REAL IDs are not required to drive or vote…but they will be required in order to get through airport security and access federal buildings.

After nearly two decades of deadline extensions for states to start issuing REAL IDs, and delays for a global pandemic, TSA announced in January that the May 7th deadline is for real. That sparked a rush for the DMV in many states.

MARTY HOMAN: In March, we issued 82,000 which is about 16,000 more than we had been over the last several months

Marty Homan is the communications manager for the North Carolina DMV. He says the state just passed the 50% mark for residents carrying REAL ID. Many are still in the process, or have not been able to get appointments before the deadline. That’s prompted officials in many states to ask residents to wait to apply until they need a REAL ID.

HOMAN: So if you're someone who's not traveling until later this summer or even the holiday season, you can wait. There's no reason to rush to try and get it by May 7.

But what does the deadline mean for people without REAL ID who do need to travel?

DANIEL VELEZ: We're not going to be turning people away in droves. We're just going to be enforcing the REAL ID enforcement date of May 7.

Daniel Velez is a spokesman for TSA covering airports in New England and North Carolina. He explains what will happen when enforcement begins.

VELEZ: If you come to the travel document checker and you do not have an acceptable ID, what's going to happen is you are going to have to go through a process. Your screening process is going to take longer.

People without REAL ID will be asked a series of questions to establish their identity by other means. But that will take time.

VELEZ: If you were coming to the airport two hours early, come three hours early.

And even for folks that do have acceptable ID, going through security may take more time.

VELEZ: In your smaller airports where we may not have that ability to pull people aside, the folks who are in line may experience a little bit longer wait times, but we're going to do the best we can at every single airport to ensure that one, people are safe, and then two, we’re getting people expedited through security screenings as fast as possible.

Velez says just over 8 in 10 travelers already come to the airport with acceptable forms of identification, and many of the remainder likely already have the documents they need, like a passport or military ID.

VELEZ: There's probably close to 20 different identifications that you can use, and some people may already have them, they don't know it.

Back at the Asheville DMV, James Serafini is leaving for California in two weeks, he’ll make it on the plane before the deadline, but he’s worried he might not be allowed onto his return flight.

MUNCY: What happens if you don't get it?

JAMES SERAFINI: When I get to the airport, I'll beg and plead, bring all the kinds of documents…

He’s almost to the front of the line… Further back, Jay and Lauren Burski are determined to get their REAL IDs too…even if it means standing in line all day.

JAY BURSKI: I don't want to come back here and have to wait again. So I guess we're stuck here. Hopefully we’ll get in before 5 o’clock.

LAUREN BURSKI: I thought you had an appointment at 3?

JAY BURSKI: I’m gonna just have to skip it.

LAUREN BURSKI: Yeah, we hope today.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy, in Asheville, North Carolina.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.