Immigrants Face Loss of Licenses in ID Crackdown

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."

It's like a yuppie type woman I know here who brags she can't turn on a vaccum cleaner --- she gets cheap live in maids from Mexico --- she was complaining how she figured the young ones would work better but every one of them would get pregnant within a couple months of arriving, work until they delivered and then never need to work again (baby's welfare checks), so she tried an older woman who worked out for a short time but then showed signs of being quite ill --- so this woman had to dump her off in front of the county hospital and find another servant. In about 20 years she managed to bring in about 20 servants who all became dependents of the taxpayers.

I got no idea what that has to do with Dubya bending to the will of the American people, but hey FITZ keep on posting.

As I have posted again and again...the PaleoCons have no trouble with American born leeches sucking at the teat of government...it's just those wetback leeches that are the problem.

Try again half baked.

Your turn skinhead.

You are a fanatic liberal with no moral or ethical grounding except some wierd liberal/relgious god complex who has latched onto some destructive cultish belief of America as savior not a nation.

You smell bad, your momma dresses you funny, and you don't love Jesus.

Your turn.

land to attract workers.

Sure -- workers who commit felony document fraud and whose employers break every labor law yet both are rewarded for their crimes --- I bet you never provided your cheap servants any health insurance benefits but figure the government can just raise taxes to do that for you. Socialism --- but you make more money than an honest employer who follows the law. Greed --- the love of money is the root of all evil and people will destroy their country for the love of money. You hire illegal labor --- quick profits for yourself is your real reason to support unlimited illegal immigration.

I believe the words I wrote have hit a nerve for you FITZ. You are completely discombobulated. You're all over the place. Either I'm a greedy Capitalist or I'm a Socailist. You can't have it both ways.

My motivations are transparent to anyone willing to read my posts. I like cheap labor because I like $1 double cheeseburgers at McDonalds, and I like a clean bathroom in my office. The Mexicans are perfectly willing to work these jobs for low pay. They appreciate the work, and I am happy they are getting the same opportunity that my great grand parents got. If people like yourself had been in control in the 1900's I would not live in America. Most likely my grandparents would have been rounded up and sent to Nazi concentration camps in the 1930's for a shower. The Mexican people are not blood thirsty killers bent on destroying this nation. They are children of God who yearn for a better life for their families.

The PaleoCons are the greedy ones. They want to keep others away from America's freedom. Shame on the Paleos.

I believe you made an earlier comment to someone else a request, in effect, for some references.

Here

Asked what they think is a “desirable” number of legal immigrants per year, most Americans (76%) would prefer immigration be kept below current levels (i.e., they say they would like to see less than one million per year admitted).

In fact, a majority (58%) would prefer fewer than 300,000 enter per year.

Opinions vary somewhat by age, with older Americans taking a harder line against legal immigration; in fact, one in four of those age 65+ (25%) would prefer to see no legal immigrants enter per year, whereas only one in twenty (5%) of those 18-24 have the same view.

Your tedious chearleading for unfettered immigration conveniently ignores all the social costs and security risks that current immigration policies generate. If you could show me some articles that effectively refute Heather MacDonald's scholarship I would really appreciate it.

Here are some more links to Heather MacDonald.

You seem to have forgotten California is going bankrupt due to services stolen by illegal immigrants. I wonder how many other state and federal services are being drained due to illegal immigration costs.

As I have posted again and again...the PaleoCons have no trouble with American born leeches sucking at the teat of government...it's just those wetback leeches that are the problem.

Try again half baked.

Your turn skinhead.

You amaze me. You are all for providing government services to illegals at taxpayer expense, but balk at providing services to citizens. At heart you are anti-American.

Yes it seems you can have it both ways --- Capitalist because you make high profits for your cheap labor, Socialist because that's how you believe your cheap labor needs to be supported. These people couldn't work for you if they had to pay their own health care and education --- but since you feel that is the responsibility of the suckers -- the taxpayers, you believe in the socialization of those.

They do the same thing in Mexico --- they enjoy an endless amount of very cheap labor --- but the top 10% is doing extremely well --- the only thing is it has caught up with them so now they need to get rid of their surplus of cheap labor.

If you have such animosity towards money, why do you whine about paying taxes to buy healthcare for your fellow man?

I'm not a Socialist for one -- and I should not have to pay so that you can surround yourself with cheap servants. I have heard families of those run out of Mexico during the Revolution --- when Pancho Villa's guys burned down their mansions --- life was so so difficult for them when they came here as refugees, they had never had to cook their own food or clean their homes and they weren't able to bring their lowly servants --- the servants were riding with Pancho Villa. It was so very very sad for these elites.

It'd be interesting to take a poll of FRers to see how many have endured being in a wreck with an illegal at fault, only to discover that the citizen's insurance has to bear the claim...to the tune of increased premiums. In my area, at least there is law enforcement on the roads in re illegals--they get in hot water driving uninsured and unlicensed.

So the lack of licenses act somewhat as a restriction on further movement, further encroachment on jobs. Once they get licensed, all bets are off, and we'll see a renewed explosion in arrivals.

Why is the headline not "Illegals face deportation in Crackdown?" Taking away their licenses is nice but why are they in this country when they have no right?

I'm not sure what we would have to do to force the Guvmint to start doing it's job, but maybe constant and persistant calls to the INS would help?

Anyone have any better suggestions?

he US allows about 50,000 legal Mexican workers in the US. We have over 10 MILLION illegals in the US...mostly from central America. Do the math. The US has the jobs. Business wants the workers. Only the knuckle dragging PaleoCons who fear they will be excluded from their life long career in toilet cleaning are stoping Dubya from giving "illegal" workers with long histories of paying Social Security the chance to continue paying taxes.

The Businesses can use the labor that's already here in a Legal Status.

If the people south of the border wish to come here and work legally, then I have no problem with them being here legally. It's the Illegal ones that should be tracked down and immediately deported. Furthermore the businesses that knowingly use Illegal Aliens as laborers should be heavily fined in order to get the point across.

I myself cannot go into a business and work without what amounts to an exhaustive background check these days. If I don't "measure up" or give them my SSN, then I can't work. They use this information to track people who are behind on Child Support, this is their rationale. But an illegal can come here, work for less than minimum wage and nobody says a thing about it? Where is the fairness in that?

There are legal remedies for these people, why don't they use it?

After all Reagan suported FDR, HST, JFK and LBJ. Thatis beyond RINO that is pure leftists.
[snip]

But Reagan never changed a single view.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're caling Reagan a leftist, aren't you?

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