Can you laminate social security card

The card serves a number of purposes for both the holder and the government, including:. Here are a few ways in which you can protect your SS card without laminating it:. Yes, if the card looks genuine. James M. Rai has been screen printing T-shirts and other textiles professionally and as a hobby for more than 15 years. Did you know that laminating is actually destructive to paper? If you want to preserve paper documents for an extended period, laminating them is a bad idea.

Indeed, experts say you should never laminate any documents to protect them. The reason is that the high heat and pressure used to laminate documents can damage them. One last thing is that lamination uses an adhesive, which is typically acidic. To remove lamination from any paper document is difficult at best. If you do it the wrong way, your documents will suffer.

There are several methods but, frankly, only one that we recommend, which is using heat. Here are the steps. Most American adults have a vast collection of documents that need protection.

Laminating a social security card is just not a good idea. Eligibility Verification I You have successfully saved this page as a bookmark. OK My Bookmarks. Please confirm that you want to proceed with deleting bookmark. Delete Cancel. You have successfully removed bookmark.

Delete canceled. Please log in as a SHRM member before saving bookmarks. In this article, all your concerns and questions about the lamination of social security cards will be answered; read on.

The Social Security card is a small, hard, plastic, wallet-sized piece of paper that contains a unique 9-digit number given to all US residents. This card is usually issued to both permanent and temporary residents working in the United States. If you reside in the United States, then this card will serve you in different ways. They include:. One of the Social Security Administration requirements is introducing social security cards that cannot be forged for fraudulent purposes.

They constantly apply new anti-fraud technologies and techniques, and changing the social security card could jeopardize these protections. On their website, you will find the information, as well, on the back of your card. They discourage lamination since it causes the failure of certain security features.

Plus, the card can be seen to be counterfeit because it is hard to prove if the card is genuine or not. A social security card has security features that will not work if it is laminated. The identity theft protection feature is significant. Besides, the social security card uses special paper that can hide essential data if laminated. Laminating can prevent this from happening.

Therefore, lamination is not recommended. It is not illegal to laminate a SS card because the Federal government refuses to laminate it but not an actual law. There is no actual law against the lamination of the social security card.