Institutional barriers are everywhere. For instance, since 2001 Mexico has given undocumented migrants in the United States consular identification cards and promoted them widely to facilitate access to American banks, libraries, schools, police departments and government offices. But there has been no parallel campaign in Mexico for migrants who reenter the country without valid identification. Even if returnees have a consular ID, these documents are not widely accepted as valid by Mexican bureaucrats. Compounding that problem, anyone returning to Mexico between March and June of this year did not even have the option of obtaining a voting card from the National Institute of Elections — the primary form of ID used in Mexico — because of restrictions imposed during the months before an election. Returnees are forced, in effect, to live "without papers" in their own country.