Sometimes you have to look at the state of the world and the people in it, and just shake your head.
- Marriott’s dumbest name for a hotel, ever
- Response to the people who lived near an airport and complained about the noise
- I thought I had seen the dumbest luggage ever. I was wrong
- Ridiculous questions about visiting Alaska and traveling to Hawaii
Of course, I’m well aware that if you’re in a profession that requires a lot of education, such as science or medicine, the people working in those sectors are generally going to be smart. On the other hand, chances are pretty good that if you meet the people working jobs that don’t necessarily need a whole lot of education, there will be a few who “ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed” (if you’re a fan of Smash Mouth, sorry not sorry for the ear worm).
But get this! Simply because a bunch of people working in airports didn’t know that people from Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, the territory has decided to add “U.S.A.” to their passports.
Here’s an example of what happened to Humberto Marchand back in May. A Hertz employee refused to give Marchand, a Puerto Rican native, his prepaid reserved car at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport because he presented his Puerto Rican driver’s license, instead of a passport.
1/2 Please see the following update: Update about being denied a Car Rental by @Hertz @flyneworleans Louis Armstrong International for daring to present my PR REAL 🆔 Driver’s License 🪪 – i am doing this post in English again for a specific reason that you will understand 👇 …. https://t.co/PtEGVNZIne
— Bert Marchand Paonessa (@Moonrican1) May 10, 2023
To add insult to injury, Mr. Marchand said that the Kenner police officer who responded to the Hertz employee’s call told Mr. Marchand that he would call “Border Patrol” if he didn’t leave the premises.
Say WHAT?!?!?! How stupid can people be?
As Eileen Vélez Vega, Puerto Rico’s secretary of transportation and public works, told the New York Times, “I was shocked about how much lack of education, lack of knowledge was out there,” She also noted that people born in Puerto Rico, a commonwealth of the United States, have the same birthright American citizenship as people born in the 50 states. “I couldn’t believe what was happening.”
Of course, Mr. Marchand wasn’t the only one.
A Puerto Rican family traveling from Los Angeles to Puerto Rico was denied travel on Spirit Airlines in May of this year, because the parents didn’t have a U.S. passport for their toddler.
@thedavidbegnaud Spirit Airlines asks Puerto Rican family to show passports then denies them flight
And then there was Raúl Colón, who was flying back to Puerto Rico after visiting Hollywood, and the TSA supervisor at LAX said he needed a passport. “He insisted that a U.S. passport was mandatory for departing to Puerto Rico, refusing to accept my valid Puerto Rico driver’s license as a sufficient form of identification.”
I bet y’all with Washington D.C. driver’s licenses were the only ones. 😉
Anyway, and then, once someone from Puerto Rico is on the mainland, say for travel or pleasure (or maybe because they live here), there have been experiences where they weren’t able to get a hotel room, to get over the counter meds, or even buy cigarettes or alcohol because the workers insisted their Puerto Rican driver’s license wasn’t good enough, and they needed to show their passport instead (which they may or may not have because, of course, people traveling from Puerto Rico to the U.S. don’t need their passport; they’re U.S. citizens).
In fact, when Morning Consult did a survey in the U.S. in 2017, they discovered that barely half (54%) of the 2,200 people they surveyed knew that people from Puerto Rico were U.S. citizens. Broken down:
- 37% of people age 18-29 knew that people born in Puerto Rico are citizens
- 64% of people age 65+ were aware that Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens
- 47% of Americans without a college degree knew Puerto Ricans were Americans
- 72% of Americans with a bachelor’s degree knew that people from Puerto Rico were U.S. citizens
- 66% of those surveyed who had postgraduate degrees knew that Puerto Ricans were Americans
That’s….pretty sad, y’all.
SO…to make things easier for their citizens, the Puerto Rico government is going to try something new. They plan to begin adding “USA” to their citizens’ driver’s licenses.
A partir de hoy nuevo formato para las licencias de conducir con el objetivo de minimizar contratiempos al momento de realizar diligencias que requieran un ID oficial. Ahora incluye Puerto Rico, USA, que enfatiza que es un territorio americano. #HaciendoQueLasCosasPasen pic.twitter.com/KxslQEaZOC
— DTOP (@DTOP) October 3, 2023
Starting today a new format for driver's licenses with the aim of minimizing setbacks when carrying out errands that require an official ID. It now includes Puerto Rico, USA, which emphasizes that it is an American territory. #MakingThingsHappen
Well, it sounds great, but will it help? Unfortunately…probably not.
Apparently several years ago, the version of the Puerto Rican driver’s license at the time had an American flag printed on it. It didn’t help. Here’s what happened, according to the New York Times:
Around a decade ago, when he was in his forties, Mr. Pabon said he went with friends to a bar in San Diego, when an employee asked him for identification. Mr. Pabon pulled out his Puerto Rican license emblazoned with the American flag.
“You have to show us your passport,” Mr. Pabon recalled the worker telling him. His passport was back home. The bar did not let him in that night, he said.
The problem isn’t the Puerto Rican driver’s license…it’s the ignorance of many Americans on the mainland. And it’s been happening for decades.
I have no doubt that people from Guam, American Samoa, and the other US territories who come to the mainland U.S. have similar problems. Except there are far more people from Puerto Rico who come here to visit, go to school, etc., so there are more instances of their being mistakenly recognized as “foreigners.”
Such a shame. We, their fellow Americans can certainly do better.
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3 comments
And New Mexico has long had to put New Mexico USA on their license plates because – well just because.
WSJ had an article back in 2019 about Puerto Ricans being recruited for jobs in the rural parts of the Midwest where companies needed workers. In Sidney, OH, the police chief at least had informed officers that PR drivers licenses were perfectly valid in Ohio. However one woman had problems opening a bank account because they wanted to see her green card even though she showed her US passport and explained she was from PR. Fortunately, she found another bank.
This quote sums it up nicely:
“The community, which like much of the Midwest needs workers, is welcoming, just often uninformed about Puerto Rico, the newcomers and some locals say. “They ask me if I have my immigrant card,” says Mr. Vázquez. He explains he is a U.S. citizen. “They begin to get mad because I don’t know too much English.”
This isn’t surprising or new.
With respect, this blog post is even guilty of it:
> people traveling from Puerto Rico to the U.S. don’t need their passport
They aren’t traveling to the US, they are *already* in the US. They are traveling to the mainland. I understand this wasn’t meant to other anyone, but it is part of the same problem: mainlanders simply do not think of Puerto Rico as part of our country, it is this other, foreign place.
With all due respect, if you’ll notice, I did include “mainland US” throughout the rest of the post. One missed “mainland” does not a “…do not think of Puerto Rico as part of our country” make. Also, quite frankly, do you think I would have written the piece if I thought PR was some “other, foreign place?”