It's been nearly two weeks since the city began issuing its first municipal ID cards, and the response has been overwhelming. NY1's Erin Clarke filed the following report.

Life will soon be a bit easier for Gorge Albarado, an undocumented immigrant who came here from Mexico 14 years ago. On Friday, he and his wife applied for their new municipal ID cards.

"This is the moment I wait for for a long time," he said. "So now, I can go everywhere. Hotels, I can make a reservation. I don't have any problems."

Albarado was joined by City Council members who also scheduled appointments, part of a new push to tout the program, which provides an official city ID card that comes with some perks.

"There are a lot of benefits to it," said one person. "Even sometimes, you get some discounts in certain stores."

More than 100,000 New Yorkers have made appointments to apply for the card, and 10,000 have actually filled out the paperwork.

High demand caused the city to stop accepting walk-in applicants, and the program's website crashed.

Officials are still trying to make improvements, such as expanding the hours at application centers.

"Appointments are going into August, so obviously there's a long wait, but if we can increase the number of enrollment centers and we can increase the number of mobile sites, we're trying to increase the capacity so that people don't have to wait that long and we can process those applications more quickly," said City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Despite the problems, the city is urging people to continue to apply.

City officials at the news conference wanted to stress that this card isn't just for immigrants. It's for anyone, they say, who needs identification. 

"In poor communities, low-income communities, it's difficult to be able to decide whether I'm going to pay X amount of dollars to go to the DMV and get an ID, or do I feed my family," said City Councilwoman Annabel Palma of the Bronx.

It's a point officials stressed over and over. Whether you were born here or overseas, the new identification cards can make a world of world of a difference.