Posted on 08/18/2004 9:20:22 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Legislatures across the country have been wrestling publicly with a hot-button issue: whether to make it harder or easier for illegal immigrants to be licensed as drivers. The struggle to reconcile public security, road safety and the reality of millions of illegal immigrant workers has led to fierce disagreement and widely different laws - even as the 9/11 commission has urged the adoption of national standards.
In New York, home to an estimated 500,000 of the nation's 10 million illegal immigrants, there has been little public debate. But behind the scenes, officials at the State Department of Motor Vehicles have begun a crackdown on license fraud that will take away the driver's licenses of as many as 200,000 immigrants who cannot prove that they are here legally.
There was scant reaction in January when the state started mailing out the first of a half-million letters threatening to suspend the licenses of drivers whose Social Security numbers did not match federal records. Fear and protest spread in places like Westchester County and Staten Island as the letters reached longtime immigrant drivers who depend on their cars to work as landscapers, construction workers or housecleaners.
And the outcry grew as immigrant advocates learned of cases in which bewildered immigrants who responded in person to motor vehicle offices had their licenses confiscated on the spot for lack of a Social Security number.
Today the protests, and explanations by the crackdown's authors, will be presented in Manhattan at the first public hearing on the policy, by the State Assembly's Transportation Committee.
It is late in the process: though only about 600 licenses have been suspended so far, state officials said that in November, a second wave of notices would begin suspending the licenses of those who have not responded, at the rate of 4,000 a day.
State officials say 250,000 licenses are in line to be suspended, and immigrant advocates estimate that 200,000 of these are held by immigrants unable to satisfy the state's requirement.
State officials say they are not aiming the effort at immigrants, just seizing on new technology to enforce an old law - a 1995 requirement that the state collect the Social Security numbers of all driver's license applicants. That measure was added in many states to improve child-support enforcement, as part of the nation's welfare overhaul. But New York is the only state where motor vehicle officials are using enhanced computer abilities to verify all the Social Security numbers collected over the years.
The results have been eye-opening, Raymond P. Martinez, the state motor vehicles commissioner, said in an interview. "
The public is going to be shocked when they find out how many people's Social Security numbers were used by other people unbeknownst to them," he said, putting the figure at more than 100,000, including one number that was used by 57 people.
Among those whose licenses have already been suspended are United States citizens who were hiding criminal driving records behind multiple identities, he said. And in an era of terror alerts, when driver's licenses are used to enter buildings, he added, "We now have the ability to verify who is who."
But critics say the enforcement will fall mainly on illegal immigrants who are hard-working members of society - and to local D.M.V. clerks with no understanding of complicated immigration laws.
"Nobody has considered the bureaucratic nightmare that they're creating," said Margaret Stock, an associate professor of national security law at the United States Military Academy at West Point, who is writing a paper on the driver's license issue. "It's actually harmful to national security to deny licenses to people on the basis of immigration status."
Ms. Stock, who is also a lieutenant colonel in the military police of the Army Reserves, said there was a better chance of tracking a terrorist with a driver's license than one without. Moreover, she said, "immigration status is a moving target - someone legal today can be illegal tomorrow and someone illegal today can be legal tomorrow," so motor vehicle offices can end up issuing and denying licenses to the wrong people.
Yet thousands of illegal immigrants denied driver's licenses will continue to drive, she said, and probably add to the number of hit-and-run accidents and uninsured drivers already on the road.
The real problem, she said, is that since 9/11, officials have been trying to turn the driver's license into "a backdoor national identity card." But, she added, "driver's licenses are really about road safety."
Because of the heightened fear of detention or deportation these days, it remains uncertain whether illegal immigrants will come forward to testify at today's hearing at 250 Broadway, said Gouri Sadwhani, executive director of the New York Civic Participation Project, an immigrant and labor organizing group. But two people whose licenses were abruptly seized by a motor vehicle clerk shared their accounts with a reporter on the condition that only their first names be published.
Luis, 34, a construction worker who has long been employed by a Connecticut subcontractor building multimillion-dollar homes in places like Greenwich, said he was so alarmed by the letter he received in January that he drove from his home in Port Chester, N.Y., to D.M.V. headquarters in Albany.
Trying to prove his identity, he presented his taxpayer ID number, credit card, rent receipts, utility bills and car insurance. But he said a clerk who demanded a Social Security number took his license and refused to return it. "I started pleading," he recalled. "I said I need my license - I need my license to work, I need my license to support my family and I need my license to live," he recalled.
But after threatening him with detention for putting the wrong number on his application years ago - probably his tax ID number, he said - the clerk walked away. State motor vehicle officials said that they could not discuss the case without Luis's full name.
"It's like the D.M.V. has cut off my arms and legs," he said last week in the immaculate apartment that he, his wife and their 3-year-old son shared with three other immigrants from Ecuador. His earnings, which must support two children left with grandparents in Ecuador, as well as his family here, typically ran $20,000 to $25,000 a year, he said. But they have dwindled since his boss learned that he had lost his license.
Still, Luis said, there is no going back. In Ecuador, he and his wife were so desperate for work to support their children that they left them behind and walked much of the way to the United States.
And he is still driving. He carefully steered his old minivan past the flashing lights of a parked police car on a rain-slicked street in Port Chester on Friday evening, as he worried aloud that his insurance would soon be canceled.
But Gloria, a Colombian woman who has lived in Queens since 1991, said she had not driven since the January day when her license was confiscated at the Whitestone motor vehicle office. She had been a licensed driver for 11 years, she said, selling Mary Kay cosmetics from her car to help support her daughter, an American citizen by birth, while working weekends as a baby-sitter for a family of lawyers living on Sutton Place in Manhattan.
"I feel humiliated because I think there's no reason to take it from me," she said. "I was a good driver; I never got a ticket for a red light or passed a stop sign. I always had insurance."
Like many immigrants in what some call a gray zone of legality, she has a petition for a green card pending, sponsored by her 76-year-old mother, now a lawful permanent resident. But under present immigration rules and backlogs, family sponsorship can take many years to bridge the gap between citizens and unlawful immigrants in the same family. Meanwhile, Gloria has no way to fulfill the state's requirements to get back her license.
The hardest part has not only been the loss of earnings - about $1,000 a month in cosmetic sales - but the effect on her mother and her daughter, now 12, she said. Only last week, her mother, who is frail and speaks no English, begged her to accompany her on a flight to Florida to visit relatives. But without a driver's license as a photo ID, it was too risky.
"My daughter was crying and saying please don't go," Gloria said. "She feels so afraid about what happened to me now."
Good. Then we agree that the US needs to dramatically increase the number of legal immigrants to meet the demand for workers.
Funny, US citizens can buy insurance too, but it's no good down in Mexico. Gotta buy "special" Mexican insurance.
Wow. You're a real douchebag.
Hey, I think you're finally starting to get it! Reward those foreigners who obey our laws by coming to the United States legally. Punish those foreigners who violate our laws by illegally coming here, or who don't leave when their visas expire. Most Americans aren't opposed to foreigners coming to the United States to live and work. Americans just want these foreigners to respect our laws by coming to the United States legally and then obey our laws while they're living here. Under no circumstances should the United States reward those foreigners who violate our laws, which amnesty would do.
Billions. Not millions.
Yes --- billions. Every citizen of the third world wants in on the vast safety net programs we've got --- if working doesn't work out for them here --- then it's a check from the government. It's also so much easier to let your own country go down the tubes and then expect you can just move to the USA.
We don't really need all that many workers --- for one we've decided to export manufacturing jobs --- we certainly don't need to import factory workers. We wouldn't need to import teachers and nurses if we weren't importing millions of people.Our machines have replaced the need for so much cheap labor.
The USA already has the world's fastest growing population due to immigration and the most legal immigrantion of any country.
In the last 70 years the population of the U.S. has roughly doubled. When do you think the government should get serious about immigration, when we have a population of almost 600,000,000 in 2075, at our current rate of population growth since the 1930s, or do you think we need to hit one billion?
Let me know if you want on or off my New York ping list.
ping
It's quite frightening that this moron is teaching at West Point. She does understand that terrorists use fake names and IDs, right?
One thing we all ought to agree on is that the level of permitted illegal immigration should be as near to zero as possible and the level of legal immigration should be sufficient to meet our national needs.
What should the level of legal immigration be? I don't know the answer, but I am certain it should not be zero, as claimed by the more extreme elements of the Constitutional Party, nor should it be unlimited, as claimed by the more extreme elements of the open borders elitists.
As a conservative, I will concede that no one has a right to a certain level of income (i.e, $25,000 for a high school graduate, $35,000 for a 4 year degree, $50,000 for a master's degree, etc.). But the flip side of that is nobody ought to have the right to hire a job at the lowest level of wage someone will illegally immigrate for. Don't like mowing your lawn? Does the willingness to spend $10 and the willingness of an illegal alien to do it for $10 while the remainder of his living expenses are shoved on Jane and Joe taxpayer make it right? I don't think so, when there are legal aliens or citizens willing to do it for, say, $20.
Do we need a realistic level of legal immigration? I think so, though I can't say exactly what that level should be. I can say that those wanting to immigrate to the United States far outnumber those which are needed in the United States, so we need to establish some reasonable criteria-- willingness to learn English, appreciate American ideals and support yourself and your dependents should be minimum qualifications. Those who clear that hurdle should be further screened to bring in those who have needed and marketable skills and training, not just those who are willing to displace native and already here legal immigrants because they are willing to do it cheaper.
Too many of our young are unwilling to train for demanding careers in things like computer programming or health services because they realistically fear employers with their insatiable desire for cheaper labor will prefer to hire someone from abroad. Is it a wonder with the detached mentality of our elite from the common American that so many of our best and brightest no longer aspire to become engineers, programmers or doctors but instead aspire to become trial lawyers and corporate titans aspiring to milk the wealth of America while paying the wages of Bangladesh? There needs to be some sense of shared fate such as we as a country had after 9-11, during World War II and other times of national crisis. We cannot continue on a path of forcing the dwindling middle class to chose between pillaging or being pillaged.
Thank God! In a few decades millions and million of baby boomers will die. Fortunately America has lots of jobs and lots of land to attract workers. What a great country we live in.
Even though Canada, and England, and France, and Germany all have free healthcare, the people of the world want to come to America.
I think it is sad that so many people think this is such a bad thing, that they want to erect an electrified 20 ft reinforced fence around the land of the free. You would think that today was the first time in our history that wave after wave of immigrants came to our shores. It is not.
For the first 100 years of America, there were no immigration barriers. I see no rhyme or reason to our current immigration quotas. I see no reason to keep anyone out of America except those who would commit acts of terrorism. I do not fear the 10 million Mexican illegals who work and support their families.
My great grand parents came to America in the early 1900's without the ability to speak English. They gathered in communities of Polish families who also spoke little or no English, but their children were taught in our schools and they learned how to speak and work and function in America.
Most Americans today share a similar history. Sadly many PaleoCons think the golden days of America are gone and America should be closed off to the people of the world. I vehemently disagree.
I also wanted to say thank you for a well written and well thought out post.
I spent nearly 5 minutes trying to find a map of undeveloped land in the USA, but I failed. I'm pretty sure I posted it for you in the past neverdem. The US has lots and lots of land and resources. I do not know what our optimum population is but we are no where near it today. As mankind improves the way it uses resources the optimum population will increase further. 1 Billion sounds about right for the amount of land and resources we have today. In 50 years as new technologies increase energy production and construction capabilities that number may double. I hope this answers your question.
Many of our hinterlands are depopulating, large urban areas are already congested and/or blighted, surrounded by boring, expansive suburbs, of which many of them don't have enough water. Importing more bodies sounds like just the ticket. Definitely, that's the ticket!
I wouldn't suggest putting more people in heavely populated areas like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Only PaleoCons can't get beyond the heavily populated cities to see the real America.
from http://www.detnews.com/2003/editorial/0310/05/a11-287321.htm
Well, there is a dramatic shift afoot in urban fortunes, weakening the clout of the biggest cities while spreading power and influence to scores of smaller centers, nowhere more markedly than here in the United States.
The nation's urban hierarchy is flattening out. What used to take place almost entirely in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or San Francisco -- whether in high finance, advertising or marketing -- is now happening more and more in unlikely locales such as Omaha, Des Moines, Fargo, N.D., and Columbus, Ohio.
"Technology now gives each town the same global footprint," says Rich Nespola, a native New Yorker and president of TMNG, a communications consulting firm with headquarters in suburban Kansas City, Kan. "People can work where they are comfortable and where it's most profitable."
This is good news for America's cities -- and for America. For many cities in the South and Midwest, spreading the wealth could signal the dawn of an era of renewed urban development, a new cosmopolitanism and growing cultural, technological and economic influence. For the country, it means a more vibrant, heterogeneous landscape, more living choices, a livelier cultural and social panorama -- let's face it, a nation that's more vital and more fun.
End of excerpt...
I bet you complained when the whips and buggy industry collapsed.
Here is a post from Common Tator
Reagan was a democrat until 1962. In 1964 Reagan made the decision to run for Governor Of California in 1966.
There was just one problem. The far right which controls the primary elections were sure to brand Reagan as a RINO and he could not get the nomination.
After all Reagan suported FDR, HST, JFK and LBJ. Thatis beyond RINO that is pure leftists. REagan and the Union he headed made big donations to the DNC and Democratic candidates at all levels.
With no Republicans wanting to get close to Goldwater in 1964, it was decided that Reagan would ask Goldwater to let him speak at the Republican National Convention. Goldwater jumped at the chance of having a RINO speak for him on natioal TV.
So Reagan did speak for Goldwater and did a great job.. The media reacted by painting Reagan as rock ribbed conservative. But Reagan was just trying to blunt his RINO image enought to get the 66 nomination for Governor.
I covered the 1980 Reagan campaign. In every stump speech Reagan said he was the only candidate for president who had been elected president of a labor union 3 times. In every speach Reagan said he was a Roosevelt Democrat and had not changed any of his views...only his party.
Regean did not repeal one welfare program or cut government spending. Government spending doubled under his administration. Reagan did build up the military in the FDR and HST tradtion.
Reagan's economic policy was a copy of JFK's economic policy. It was the same policies followed by Roosevelt, HST, and JFK. Reagan said it over and over he was just doing what JFK had done in 1961. Was JFK a Democrat? Think So!!!
A man who patterned his policies after FDR and JFK is not a conservative.
You only prove how the media fools the suckers. Reagan never cut government programs. But he doubled government spending. He was not a conservative. He was what the California right feared. Reagan was a RINO.. And he got he right wing to support him.
Increasing govenrment spending and economic stimulus were and are Democratic programs.. Reagan was the ultimate RINO.. He managed to get conservative support.. Or more accurately the media got Reagan conservative support.
One speech for Goldwater and the nations bigest RINO became a Conservative in the media's eyes... and yours. But Reagan never changed a single view.
I think it is sickening to see zealots who have their heads so far up their ass they can only talk sh*t.
Buy a toothbrush g-gal.
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