[666maslo666]

He had an ID card. You can ID him.

If you can ID him, you can also check his immigration status. It should be included on the ID itself, or the policeman can use the information on the ID card to check the immigration status. And you certainly can temporarily detain someone who is driving without a driving license.

I'm sorry but this is the point where I'm going to have to give up. If you are incapable of seeing why someone who is on holiday might not want to carry their passport around at all times and risk having it lost, stolen or damaged to the point where they have to go through the hassle of getting a new one before even being allowed to leave the country, then there is no point in even speaking to you.

If you dont want to carry your passport with you all the time, fine. But then be prepared to produce that passport in a timely manner when you violate the law, including driving without a driving license. If you have a problem with this simple concept, then I agree, there is no point speaking about it further, as we probably wont agree.

[The E]

If you can ID him, you can also check his immigration status. It should be included on the ID itself, or the policeman can use the information on the ID card to check the immigration status. And you certainly can temporarily detain someone who is driving without a driving license.

No, you cannot, at least not under the applicable Alabama laws (which define driving without a driver's licence as a non-arresting offence).

[Mika]

I'm curious about how it works in Germany, I recall being warned of travelling there without a passport. I think it went so that you have to be able to prove your identity if the police asks, and in this case foreigners would need a passport to do that. However, that's a document I prefer not to carry with me if I have any kind of trust in the hotel and prefer to leave it in my room.

The question comes, what happens if I don't have the passport with me when stopped by the police?

[The E]

As a german national, I am only required to own an ID card, I am not required to have it with me at all times (There are exceptions to this: If I am working in a business that is regularly controlled by the authorities for of-the-book workers, then I am required to have my ID with me) (§1 PAuswG)
For foreign citizens, similar rules apply: You have to have valid ID documents on entering and exiting Germany, and while in Germany, you are required to own (but not carry) valid ID (§8 FreizügG/EU, §3 AufenthG)

(IANAL, obviously)

[karajorma]

When it comes to the UK there is no requirement whatsoever to carry ID with you at all times either. In fact in the UK you don't even need your driving licence when driving a car. If you are pulled over and the vehicle isn't reported stolen they'll give you a "produce", which means you have a certain number of hours to go to a police station and produce your documents.

Personally I've never understood why other countries insist that you basically have all the documentation required to steal someone's car (or identity) with the vehicle. I can't see how it doesn't encourage crime.

[The E]

As for what happens when you are stopped by the police without ID documents: This strongly depends on context. If you're stopped while riding your bike because of some minor misconduct (not that I'm speaking from experience on that one or anything *ahem*), the plod will usually let you off with a caution (or, if you're able to pay the fine right then and there, let you do that). If you're currently, say, part of a violent mob, I'm guessing different rules apply.

[Grizzly]

I got extremely lucky with cops once, when I was pulled over for driving at night whilst my lights were not fully functioning (I had not noticed this myself, as it turned out one light was half-dimmed), and all I had with me was my... public transport card.

I managed to get away with it by simply saying "Look, I know I forgot something very important and I am sorry for it, but y'all got this big database of drivers licenses already, surely you can just look me up and see that the pictures match?"

As it turned out, they could, so it was okay, but oof.

I'm sorry but this is the point where I'm going to have to give up. If you are incapable of seeing why someone who is on holiday might not want to carry their passport around at all times and risk having it lost, stolen or damaged to the point where they have to go through the hassle of getting a new one before even being allowed to leave the country, then there is no point in even speaking to you.

It should perhaps be noted that Dubai uses this tactic to abuse their migrant population (The UAE is entirely dependent on migrant workers for their economy): The government seizes the employees documents and will only release them at the express permission of the employer, thus preventing them from leaving the country. This practice leaves them entirely at the mercy of the employer and has been compared to slavery.

[Mongoose]

It is rather fun to see maslo's staggering ignorance of not only common-law practices (and if having to do the likes of carrying around a national ID at all times is standard operating procedure in other parts of the world, then thank God for common-law), not to mention the economic realities of big chunks of the first world.  Case in point: sure, forcefully deport all illegal migrant farm workers, and then see how well you do when millions of tons' worth of crops rot on the vine, and food prices skyrocket.  And yep, the fact that Japan's barely having any kids is no problem whatsoever, right?

[NGTM-1R]

Personally I've never understood why other countries insist that you basically have all the documentation required to steal someone's car (or identity) with the vehicle. I can't see how it doesn't encourage crime.

In the US license and registration don't prove ownership of the car, just that the car is registered with the state. Title proves you own the car, and isn't carried.

[karajorma]

In the US license and registration don't prove ownership of the car, just that the car is registered with the state. Title proves you own the car, and isn't carried.

Ah. Fair enough. In the UK we just have the tax disc which you have to display in the window for that instead. But surely someone's drivers licence is very useful if you want to steal their identity. right? And surely the requirement to always have the drivers licence on you if you are pulled over does encourage people to keep it in the glove compartment (even if that is not a smart thing to do).

[Grizzly]

In the US license and registration don't prove ownership of the car, just that the car is registered with the state. Title proves you own the car, and isn't carried.

Ah. Fair enough. In the UK we just have the tax disc which you have to display in the window for that instead. But surely someone's drivers licence is very useful if you want to steal their identity. right? And surely the requirement to always have the drivers licence on you if you are pulled over does encourage people to keep it in the glove compartment (even if that is not a smart thing to do).

These laws come from an era where the best way of letting other police officers know that a person's driving license was revoked was by physically seizing the driving license.

[NGTM-1R]

But surely someone's drivers licence is very useful if you want to steal their identity. right? And surely the requirement to always have the drivers licence on you if you are pulled over does encourage people to keep it in the glove compartment (even if that is not a smart thing to do).

Speaking from experience, while the first part is true, your license is basically an ID card in itself and lives in your wallet along with credit/debit cards and any other magnetic strip/chip cards, healthcare/car insurance cards if you have them, etc. You might lose it if you lose your wallet, but there are things in there that can hurt you a lot more quickly in that sense.

Since a lot of places require you to show photo ID with the use of a check or a large credit/debit purchase to avoid exactly this sort of ID theft situation, your drivers license pretty much can't live in your car. It has to stay with you.

[karajorma]

Fair enough. As I said before, I'm from a country where you're not required to even have ID. I think many Americans would be surprised by how much you can get by in the UK without any form of ID.

[The E]

Getting back to criminal immigrants in Germany, 2 days ago, the newspaper "Welt" wrote that the NRW authorities were warned about crimes by people of north-african descent as far back as October 2014, but kept quiet about it in order to keep the peace.

This news was happily regurgitated, is being happily regurgitated in fact, by the usual right wing idiots. Pegida, AfD, GDL, Pro Deutschland, everyone couldn't wait to scream about what a scandal this is and how everyone's been lying again, bla bla bla.

Except for a few small, unimportant details. Yes, there was a session where these things were discussed. Yes, it did happen in October 2014. Publically. As in, the session was held with open doors and full access for anyone who cared to listen in. The protocol of this session, which Welt depicts as breaking news just newly uncovered and long suppressed, was available publically soon after that session.

As for there being a decision to actively suppress these news? Welt says there was one, the protocol disagrees: People were talking about how these news would impact the public perception of the refugees and how it would affect the public sentiment for or against their acceptance; at no point were active measures to suppress news discussed or decided on.


As much as Pegida et al rail about the press lying at every turn, they seem more than ready to blindly believe them when it suits them.

Source: Bildblog,

[Bobboau]

now everything has come full circle

[Grizzly]

If you look at the reasons provided it becomes more obvious that this is not so much an immigration problem as it is a problem with Israel's foreign policy not being in line with their raison d'être. This absolutely sucks, but things will not come full circle untill somewhere in what we have decided to call the western world a nation arises that massively detains, deports and dehumanizes entire population groups.

Anyway, as this is the current refugee thread, there was this interesting TED talk:

[666maslo666]

sure, forcefully deport all illegal migrant farm workers, and then see how well you do when millions of tons' worth of crops rot on the vine, and food prices skyrocket.  And yep, the fact that Japan's barely having any kids is no problem whatsoever, right?

The thing is, US produced food prices are too low and they actually should increase. Cost of any domestically produced product should be high enough to cover legal labour requirements to create that product, including respecting minimum wage laws and the cost of having legal workforce. So let the crops rot, and maybe next year US food producers will adapt to pay enough money to employees to produce the food without the need to import a new semi-permanent underclass into the economy and thus ****ing the country over for profits.

Also, I did not say Japan "Japan's barely having any kids is no problem whatsoever", I said it is a lesser problem than unregulated mass immigration would be. Using unregulated mass immigration to solve demographic issues is like curing the disease by killing the patient. But its nice to see that my argumentation is so refined that you have to construct an obvious strawman to even begin to address it.. 

[Bobboau]

@Josh - well, I was mostly posting it due to the inherent irony.

[Vidmaster]

Sanctuary / political asylum is a basic human right, and is part of the German constitution as it should be. This whole natonalistic, borderline racist discussion is terrible. You CANNOT close the ****ing borders unless you want to kick said basic human rights and shoot the people yourself. This whole all-inclusive conviction of foreigners, while all too human, is not humane (great sentence). Accepting others does obviously not mean that we do not apply our laws, for instance the punishment for sexual harassment, endangering others or contempt of court and police. We apply them to the people responsible like a good constitutional state should. And we can also take steps to protect our populace from such things as long as it does not end up in the above mentioned general conviction.

From my perspective as a German, there are three really terrible things here:

A) the degree of organization involved...    The offenders had sheets of paper with obscene and agressive statements with them, translating Arabic into German. I am not one for conspiracy theories but this is really weird to me. Plus Cologne was not the only city, although that one is most prominently featured in the media. Someone is behind this, a party who wants to make things worse for refugees and create an acceptance for more inhumane politics. Could be anyone from Salafi extremists trying to make recruitment easier (we had stuff like this in Germany before) to actual ****ing Nazis trying to gain points with the populace ("we were always right, you see?")

B) the scary degree of hidden racism that now once again surfaces in our socity. Now before you misquote me on that, I do not believe this is a German thing. But when your parents-in-law start to parrot made up facts by idiotic people out of a sudden, I wonder in which county I live in. Thought about going to Finland or Sweden or something as they seem to be the last remaining bastion of humane politics. And then I read an article about paramilitaric criminal Nazis in Finland patrolling the streets now to "protect the people" and actually getting praised by the ****ing police for it...            world's gone to **** :-(

C) Germany has a pretty strong position in Europe and has used that position to do some stupid things foreign-politics-wise that do not really express solidarity. So did the other wealthy northern countries, not to mention the absolutely crazy special treatment that Britian has pretty much blackmailed the others to grant. Central Europe has dumped the refugees on Greek and Italy in the past, stupid mistake.
But the fact that absolutely everyone  flat out refuses to acknowledge that we are a european UNION at the moment...    I am shocked and strongly believe that we are currently seeing the cracks in the united Europe. It is falling apart all around us, with natonalistic thinking being on the rise.

[zookeeper]

And then I read an article about paramilitaric criminal Nazis in Finland patrolling the streets now to "protect the people" and actually getting praised by the ****ing police for it...            world's gone to **** :-(

Well, I don't know where you read that but as far as I know it's quite a hyperbolic misrepresentation. It's been a hot topic here for weeks and it sure looks like 90% moral panic and 10% actual issue.