Bill To Make Mexican ID Official

A pair of lawmakers in the nation’s most populous state has introduced legislation that would allow easily forged Mexican identification cards—popular among illegal immigrants—to be accepted as an official form of ID.

The California Democrats, a state senator from the south and an assemblyman from the north, want the Mexican Matricula Consular cards to carry the same weight as a U.S. government-issued identification—such as a Department of Motor Vehicle drivers license or a State Department passport—for business transactions. 

Under their proposed bill, all notaries in the Golden State would accept the controversial Mexican cards as valid identification for executing property transfers and other official transactions. 

The National Notary Association opposes any legislation that would permit its 50 million members to rely solely on the Mexcian cards to verify a person’s identity. The group points out that the FBI has deemed the Matricula an unreliable form of identification with no viable security features.  

Only one state (Nevada) allows public notaries to accept the Mexican cards as official identification but several major U.S. banks—Wells Fargo and Bank of America, among them—have for years accepted them to open accounts. The Mexican cards have also been used by millions of illegal immigrants to obtain fraudulent home mortgages, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.