The barriers to obtain an identity document as a Venezuelan are getting higher every day, and new changes made by the government are only exacerbating the problem. For those who know how bureaucratic processes work in the country, the promises are not hopeful.
Although digitalization seems like a breakthrough, Venezuelans know it is never that simple. In order to get a new national identity card, or renew one, it will now be necessary to arrange an appointment on the Saime website. In the past this site only worked for the passport and caused many headaches for citizens, due to system failures and errors.
Until recently, people could go to any office to get their ID card without an appointment, but on pre-established days. However, it wasn’t that simple either; in order to be attended to, you had to arrive at the office at 3-4 in the morning and wait, and depending on numbers you could waste your day.
The last time I renewed my ID card I visited several offices without success. In one office they told me that the system was down for a week and they didn’t know when it would be fixed. For me, the solution at that time consisted of traveling to another city where the process was simpler. After waiting for months, I replaced it in one afternoon.
To get an ID card right now, not only do you have to make an online appointment, but you also have to provide personal information such as your address, personal traits and birth certificate details. Many of them are commonplace, but the requirement that caused the biggest stir in social networks is associated with information from the health center of birth.
“My mom is worried because she has to renew her identity card soon,” said a Twitter user. “She doesn’t have precise data from the health center where she was born. She was born 88 years ago at home and with a midwife. The prefecture where her birth certificate is kept was burned.”
With a website that lets you fill in some blanks, but gives you preset options for others, it’s a valid concern. Besides, a lot of this data was supposed to be handled by the ID office — they had added it for the first ID in childhood.
The obstacles are also related to the mismanagement of the system. “I believe in the theory that in the change of system Saime lost all the data and now it puts [it on] us to replace it,” wrote another user on Twitter.
It wouldn’t be the first time. I knew it could happen when they deleted all my personal details a few years ago during an ID renewal. According to that ‘little’ problem they generated in a few minutes from a computer, I practically did not exist and had no access to get my passport. After a few years of insisting, the problem was solved.
Other users wrote on Twitter that they were born in health centers that no longer exist, the registers where their original birth certificates are kept have deteriorated over the years or they are worried about the human cost it will have for them.
NGO Control Ciudadano considers that due to cumbersome administrative obstacles both the Venezuelan identity card and the Venezuelan passport are being limited. For this reason, many people are looking for other ways to simplify such processes.
If it is impossible to make an appointment, you must pay a non-legal external agent, who in theory facilitates the process but, in many cases, charges money without providing a solution. Until now, if you wanted an ID card or passport, the easiest way to get it was to pay between 20 dollars and a thousand dollars, depending on the process, the type of requirement and the quickness, (this amount is in addition to the cost of the passport).
Those who choose not to pay an external agent have a long, tedious, complicated and exhausting process. For my most recent passport renewal, I waited six months for the day of my appointment, then spent 16 hours in line on the street over two days. The first day the system was down, no one was attended to.
The system has failures all the time, but they just call it bad luck. It means nothing to them (because it doesn’t affect them) to miss a day of work, wait in the rain, get sunstroke or wait for hours without being able to use a toilet.
The difficulty of the process is not because it is free, in fact the Venezuelan passport is one of the most expensive in the world — approximately 200 dollars, which entitles you to have an appointment, wait in line for hours and start the application to receive it months later.
An English travel content creator recently brought this up on Instagram, when his Venezuelan girlfriend spent three months in paperwork when trying to renew her passport, with canceled appointments, rejected visas and long queues. In the meantime, he was able to travel without a visa and was thankful for his luck.
For Venezuelans living abroad it is not easy either. Depending on the country where they reside, they may have to travel to another country to renew their passport. In some cases, some have waited two years for the new document to arrive.
The procedures are complicated and the lack of trust in the system always generates many doubts in the population. No one expects that the new system will speed up the processes, instead they estimate that it will take much longer to obtain their identity documents.
Image: Edgary Rodriguez R.