You guys don't need a Department of Homeland Security. All you need to do is put the Department of Motor Vehicles in charge of your defense system. At the very least, it would have meant 9/11 didn't happen for another twelve to fifteen years while the terrorists waited in lines to find out how to get a pilot's license in this country.

Getting a driver's license in New Zealand works like this. You phone the nearest licensing office and make an appointment. Usually they are booked at least a month ahead, but when your appointment comes up, you go in at the specified time, do the test, and depart. Your license is then mailed to you. It takes about half an hour out of your day, not counting travelling time.

Colorado is much more advanced when it comes to red tape.

1. You are legally required to get your license issued by an office located in the county you live in.
2. There is only one office in each county.
3. The one office in each county is only open weekdays from 9-5, making it necessary to take time off work to do anything there.
4. You can't book ahead for written tests, so you have to take an ENTIRE DAY off work and go in and wait in line with the approximately eighty billion other people living in your county who need licenses, printouts of their traffic offenses, car registrations, and everything else the office deals with.
5. They hire people who are incapable of independent thought, so that unless you phrase each question EXACTLY right, they will either stare blankly at you, or keep repeating what is written on their prompt sheet, regardless of whether or not this applies to what you are saying to them.

So, I got there, and the first thing you have to do is show your two forms of acceptable ID to the woman at the first desk. I had a list of what constitutes acceptable ID; items four and five were "A valid US passport" and "A valid foreign passport". Foolishly, I believed that anything on the list of valid items was in fact a valid item, so I brought my passports.

I said to the woman at the first desk that I had recently arrived in the USA, had no US driver's license, and wanted to get one. She asked if I already had a Colorado license. I said no. She asked if I had a license from another US state. I reminded her "Well, like I said, I just arrived in the USA recently, and I don't have a US license. I want to get one." She snapped "So that's a no" (an unembellished "no" was apparently the only acceptable answer to that question), gave me the same form I was already holding, and started dealing with the next person in line.

Somewhat taken aback, I shoved back in and gave her my two valid forms of ID. She looked at them and said "You can't have two passports." I pointed out that I was a dual national, both passports were valid, and it said right there on the piece of paper that you could use "A valid US passport" and "A valid foreign passport" as ID. She repeated, in defiance of the physical evidence, that nobody could have two passports.

At this point I asked to speak to the manager. This meant standing in a line. The manager couldn't figure out what the problem was, because I clearly was providing the ID they asked for. I refrained from saying "The problem is that you are the only staff member in this room with more than one brain cell." He told me to go back to the front desk woman and tell her I had spoken to him and he said it was OK. Oddly enough, she took my word for it that I had done this, and gave me a number for the waiting line.

It was number 111. Somebody else in the line told me her number was 88 and she had already been waiting there for two and a half hours. The electronic sign on the wall said they were up to number 65.

So, anyway, about an hour and a half later they called my number, which did not actually mean I could get served. It meant I was allowed to join the line to get served. I spent about another half hour in that line, and when I got to the front of it, the first thing the girl said was "You can't use two passports as ID."

So then I pulled out a machine gun and shot everybody while laughing insanely. No, wait, I mean, then I told her the manager and the front desk lady had already OKed it. This, in fact, was how I came to be in the service queue in the first place; nobody could take a number and join the queue without having their documents checked. Still, she had to go and talk to both of them to make extra sure. When she came back, instead of serving me, she had a lengthy conversation with the person at the next station about how there was that guy from Germany one time who had a foreign passport too, and how it was interesting the way people had passports. Then she got some sunflower seeds out of a drawer and started eating them in front of me while putting my details into the computer, chewing with her mouth open and talking to her friend throughout the procedure.

Next, I had to go and sit back down until the cashier called me up to pay, because God forbid they should hire somebody capable of both typing names into a computer AND taking a ten dollar note and sticking it in a drawer. About two thousand years later, I got to pay the cashier, who GAVE ME THE ACTUAL PIECE OF PAPER WITH THE WRITTEN TEST ON IT and told me to get in Line 2 when I had finished filling it in. I got in Line 2 straight away and filled in the test (a 30 second exercise) while waiting. Finally, Line 2 Person marked it with excruciating slowness and care.

In a majestic example of cosmic irony, Line 2 Person was the SAME WOMAN FROM THE FRONT DESK WHEN I ARRIVED (they swap around, I guess), and she ASKED TO SEE MY TWO FORMS OF ID AGAIN. I was so, so certain she was about to say "But you can't HAVE two passports!" and the world would then have come to an end.

Anyway, she finally decided I had passed, and I got in the penultimate line to have my photo taken, and then the glorious last line ever, to get the actual license once it got spat out of the machine. So now I have a US learner's license, and I booked the practical test for June 13th because they don't let you take it straight away.

I don't think I could handle going back to that damn place immediately anyway. On the up side, the photo looks great and is much better than the one on my NZ license.