LA CRUCES, N.M. – A man said he and his then-fiancee had to prove New Mexico is a state after a District of Columbia clerk denied his driver’s license as proof of identity earlier this month.

The La Cruces Sun-News reports Gavin Clarkson, who lives in Las Cruces, and his fiancee attempted to apply for a marriage license at a D.C. license bureau on Nov. 20.
Clarkson said the clerk, however, wouldn’t accept his New Mexico driver’s license, believing he was a foreign citizen. The clerk allegedly said he would have to provide an international passport to get the license.

“She thought New Mexico was a foreign country,” he told the La Cruces Sun News. “All the couples behind us waiting in line were laughing.”Clarkson wrote about the incident on Facebook:

“You know you are from flyover country when you are applying for a marriage license, give them your New Mexico driver’s license, and they come back and say “my supervisor says we cannot accept international driver’s licenses. Do you have a New Mexico passport?” They went back to a supervisor to check if New Mexico was a state … TWICE!

The new Mrs. Clarkson thinks that the most hilarious part was when the clerk complemented me on my English. (For those that don’t know, Marina immigrated from Argentina in 1994 and became a US citizen fourteen years later).”



Clarkson said personnel eventually accepted his license along with the marriage application.

Leah H. Gurowitz, director of media and public relations for D.C. Courts, issued the following statement on the situation to the La Cruces Sun News:

“We understand that a clerk in our Marriage Bureau made a mistake regarding New Mexico’s 106-year history as a state. We very much regret the error and the slight delay it caused a New Mexico resident in applying for a DC marriage license.”

Link: https://wtkr.com/2018/11/30/co...-asked-for-passport/

New Mexico Tourism has a monthly column in their magazine called “One of Our 50 is Missing”! The stories are hilarious, but too often too true.

https://www.newmexico.org/nmma...f-our-50-is-missing/

I’ve had similar things happen to me.

The funny thing is that NM is ranked at the bottom of the 50 states as far as education goes, yet I’m willing to bet that the majority of New Mexicans know they live in the States.

While living in Michigan my mother mailed me a check from New Mexico probably about 1977 or so. I took it to a National Bank of Detroit branch and the teller told me "Foreign bank checks have to be taken downtown (Detroit) to cash them. I had to educate her that it had been a state since 1912 and was located between Arizona,Texas,Colorado and Utah.

https://www.newmexico.org/nmma...f-our-50-is-missing/

I ran into the same issue while living there for nine years when I had to deal with out of state matters. Probably the best was when I moved back to Michigan in 1988. I went to the Secretary of State to change my drivers license and register the cars here. Our drivers licenses were about half the size of Michigan's , she said something about foreign licenses but I am not sure if she thought it was out of the U.S. or just out of state. But she did have to get a supervisor to look it over.

I will bet someone a dollar that this DC clerk is a millennial that was not taught the basic things most of us learned while in school. God Bless

This is something I'd expect out of The Onion.

Texans have been saying New Mexico isn't a state for years

This same thing was happening back in 1996 when people from New Mexico tried to buy Olympic tickets. Those agents certainly weren't millennials but they were just as ignorant as many are today.

That's pretty sad, but I believe I can top it...

I live in the Town of Gouldsboro. The "Town" consists of 6 separate "villages":

Gouldsboro
South Gouldsboro
West Gouldsboro
Prospect Harbor
Birch Harbor
Corea

The Operations Buildings of the Winter Harbor Naval Base were located within the boundaries of the Village of Corea. When the base closed, the Corea Site reverted back to the State. Various schemes were devised to re-purpose the site.

My wife contacted the State Representative for our district in with some questions about one of the schemes.

His response? "You'll have to contact the State Department, we don't deal with foreign countries."

Bless their heart....

There is a reason New Mexico decided to add "USA" to their license plates in the late 80's.

JD

We're not New and we're not Mexico!

quote:

Originally posted by JD2177:
There is a reason New Mexico decided to add "USA" to their license plates in the late 80's.

JD

That’s it.
I pointed out the “USA” on a New Mexico plate and explained why to a Norwegian friend who was visiting about that time and he could only shake his head in wonderment.

Mother in law is a New Mexico native as her family made its way from the south in the 30s and NM in the 40s then to CA by the 1950s. And she’s as lily white as a sheet of copy paper. Multiple times in her life she’s had people look at forms and such when it says birthplace = NM tell her. You don’t look Mexican. Or you speak such good English for a Mexican. Etc. how can the population in general be so stupid. Wait. Don’t answer that

Took13,
I believe this having heard about people not knowing New Mexico is one of our states. Until this last issue NM had "USA" on their license plates for this reason.
Why is this not unusual? A half century ago the federal Dept. of Education removed Colonial and Early American history from the federal mandated curriculum __First grade to high school.
When I went to school these subjects were taught in every grade. (some every day) A neighbor of mine a graduate of Arizona U....thought the American Revolution took place "around 1200". My next door neighbors, both physician assistants had never heard of the Mexican American War.
Now you know why millions of Americans voted as they did in this last midterm election.

This didn't start with millennials. I remember reading a Dear Abby/Ann Landers letter from a NM resident lamenting the situation, about the time the first millennials were being born.

I have met members of a subculture in D.C. who believe a lack of education and ignorance are virtues. That is all.

While my son was living in Sweden, many people I spoke to would start describing all things Swiss. It’s the same basic problem, a similar name that provides an association. None of those people were millennials, but gen X’ers like myself. It’s easy to blame the millennial generation, but this has gone on for a long time.

I’m from Virginia. When I first moved west thirty years ago, I can’t recall how often people would start talking about Charleston and the tolls on the Turnpike. They had no idea that WV was a different state.

quote:

That's pretty sad, but I believe I can top it...

Our modern Public School system graduate no doubt.

It's like they've never looked at a map of the U.S. It's the 5th largest state in the union, pretty hard to miss. I could understand if it were Rhode Island or Delaware