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MATRICULAS CONSULARES: FORGE-PROOF CHECKS THAT BOUNCE

By Mark Andrew Dwyer

Imagine this.

Someone keeps paying you with checks that bounce. Once you bring this issue up, he tries to dismiss your concerns pointing to counterfeit preventing features of these checks, like a water mark, micro-print background, and even a hi-tech holographic image, that make them next to impossible to forge. Would you accept such an explanation? Of course not. Only an idiot would accept a forge-proof check knowing that it will be returned because of insufficient funds.

But that is exactly what California legislature wants to do. They are considering a bill (AB 25) that would mandate accepting Mexican issued matricula consular cards as a valid form of ID. In support of that idiotic bill, Assemblyman Fabian Nuñez had this to say: "It is much easier to counterfeit an identification card, a driver's license and much easier to falsify even a U.S. passport than it is [to counterfeit] a matricula consular" [a quotation from ].

Yeah, right. All a Mexican-looking individual needs to obtain a matricula consular card is a Mexican birth certificate and an "official" document with a photograph (a school certificate will do). Any homegrown forger can easily produce them for you for a very modest fee. For instance, birth certificates are being sold in L.A. for about 30 dol. each. Mexican consulates that issue 100% forge-proof matriculas do not routinely verify the authenticity of the documents presented to them. So the value of matriculas consulares for identification purposes is about the same as the value of a check with advanced safety features but no funds to pay.

The only possible lawful use of the matricula consular cards would be to use them during deportation proceeding of their bearers, since no one who is in the U.S. legally needs them (and Mexican authorities do not accept them as a valid form of ID in Mexico, either). But, apparently, this is not what California legislature has had in mind.

DotAlso see: Mexican IDs are a sham

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