pdq = troll. Rest of you, wasting your time.

I spent a long time living in Belgium where the citizen's ID card is the most useful bit of paper anyone can have. Banks, police, pubs, whatever. Flash the bit 'o paper, bearing your photo, which fits neatly into your wallet and which everyone carries everywhere, and you're home free. When you *have* an ID card the words "Your papers please" hold no terrors at all. If you don't, you'll have a lot of explaining to do. Which is the way it should be.

All that trucker's problems could've been solved if his state had had a proper ID card system, instead of leaving it to low-level functionaries to decide what's a proof of his legitimate existence. Given the ass-covering culture that exists in modern bureaucracies, something like this was inevitable. And it will happen again, and again. Mark my words!