In 2006, the Brennan Center for Justice issued a "Policy Brief on Proof of Citizenshp: http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/policy-brief-proof-citizenship. This document shows how a demand for citizenship documents can affect voting.

I would guess that most Americans don't have passports, and this BBC article backs that up: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42586638. It says that 10% of Americans had passports in 1995, but that number was over 40% in 2017. I got my first passport in 1999, when I was 51 years old and planning to visit Europe for the first time since I got out of the Army in 1974. Until 2001, Americans didn't need passports to visit Canada and Mexico and some Caribbean nations, and most Americans couldn't afford to visit Europe - and there was no thought that passports would be required for anything other than international travel.

I think the idea of having to show identification for anything other than liquor purchase or getting stopped for a speeding ticket is alien to most Americans. There is a movement toward requiring identification for more things, but I get the feeling the proponents expect that the requirement won't apply to white Americans unless they have "foreign" accents.

I know a fair number of Hispanic people in my community here in California, a land that was once part of Mexico. Some of these Hispanic people are undocumented, and some are naturalized or are citizens by birth. The current administration causes a lot of fear in the Hispanic community, even among those who are citizens by birth. I was surprised that fear had spread to Irish-born nuns, but apparently some of them are afraid, too.

There are a lot of frightening things happening in the United States these days. I don't think anybody feels safe anymore, now that we're being ruled by the xenophobes.

-Joe-