Mission Identidad is one of the

Bolivarian Missions The Bolivarian missions are a series of over thirty social programs implemented under the administration of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and continued by Chávez's successor, Nicolás Maduro. The programs focus on helping the mo ...

implemented by

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

n president

Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; ; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician, Bolivarian Revolution, revolutionary, and Officer (armed forces), military officer who served as the 52nd president of Venezuela from 1999 until De ...

. This program provides Venezuelan national identity cards to facilitate access to the social services provided by the other Missions. Misión Identidad mainly seeks to ease the process of obtaining an ID card. Venezuela has had a national system of ID cards since the 1940s, and these ID documents need to be renewed every 10 years. Foreigners living in the country also need to possess an ID; this foreigner's ID would be equivalent to the U.S. alien registration card (or

green card A green card, known officially as a permanent resident card, is an identity document which shows that a person has permanent residency in the United States. ("The term 'lawfully admitted for permanent residence' means the status of having been ...

). In Venezuela, under this Mission, it is absolutely forbidden to ask any money for this document, and foreigners who comply with all the legal requirements can legally obtain one. Possession of this document is required before one can vote in Venezuelan elections.

Controversy

In a study by the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), at least 173 people from the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

were caught with Venezuelan documentation. The SFS believes that the documentation was provided by the Venezuelan government through Mission Identidad, stating that 70% of the people came from Iran, Lebanon and Syria "and had some connection with Hezbollah". The majority allegedly had Venezuelan passports, IDs, visas and in some cases, even Venezuelan

birth certificate A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the Childbirth, birth of a person. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation ...

s. One of the key figures of the Venezuelan government noted in the SFS report was the Lebanese born former Minister of the Interior, Tarek El Aissami, who allegedly "developed a sophisticated financial network and multi-level networks as a criminal-terrorist pipeline to bring Islamic militants to Venezuela and neighboring countries, and to send illicit funds from Latin America to the Middle East".

References

{{Venezuela topics Bolivarian missions