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."
Just listen to the liberals. You will learn something new every day. < /sarcasm >
The 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.
FReepers, illegal immigration tears our nation apart, and tears illgal aliens families and marriages apart. No good comes from bad actions. Sooner or later they will need to get their home countries under control, (same as we do) and the sooner they begin - the better. For us; ditto.
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.
So, naturally, terroists won't bother getting a license, like they didn't bother to learn how to land an aircraft.
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.
Has anyone actually proven this? Illegals with licenses won't hit and run but those without licenses will?
I agree. They can also get driver's licenses in Mexico.
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."
Death is too good for this criminal!!!
...and that is really the saddest thing about PaleoCons. They think the people who clean their toilets and pick their food are less than human when it is really the PaleoCons who have no human feelings for others. So guided by ideology they forgot how to feel.
I will not pray for you.
So your real objective is to condemn these people to a lifetime of toilet cleaning? Or are you implying that these illegals will remain toilet cleaners if Bush would just grant them amnesty?
Way to twist my words. I don't look down on people who do hard work for little pay.
I didn't twist your words. That's what you said.
Basically, if these people remain illegals, toilets is about the best they can do. If they get amnesty, then they move up the economic ladder - albeit by ruining the chances of more deserving immigrants from across the globe.
Which means that these so-called "PaleoCons" may have an argument, correct?
Illegal aliens are working in many different fields of employment besides toilet cleaning. The majority of Americans don't believe in rewarding people who have violated our immigration laws. There are millions of foreigners around the world who are patiently waiting for their turn to legally immigrate to the United States. These are the people who should be rewarded with a green card, not the illegal aliens who have no respect for our laws.
I don’t care if Regan did say it, he is wrong, The United States the result of English Colonization. You could say that we were started by immigrants, but we are not a county of immigrants, and have not been since approximately 1780. Did you not notice that the Constitution says that you have to be born here to be President? 90% of the people here were born here. We are a sovereign nation being INVADED by immigrants, to say other wise is liberal communist propaganda.
They seem perfectly willing to accept low paying jobs. Do you fear a non-English speaking immigrant will take your job? If so I feel sad for you.
I think you're upset because I quoted Reagan and Reagan said the one issue illegal immigrant hating troglodytes are wrong. He gave amnesty to 6 million hard working illegals and didn't do anything to protect the losers who lost their jobs to uncultivated, unskilled, non-English speaking refuges from a 3rd world. Those losers are pathetic and only good for baking macaroni casseroles to pass around at the Constimatushunalist Party convention
Reagan also signed a quite liberal abortion bill in California that he later deeply regretted. He was a man and could be wrong. Quoting any politician like scripture makes you seem like the macaroni baking loser.
You know nothing of history. The Chinese built the railroad in the mid 1800's. Africans built much of the South. Texas and California were owned by Mexico until the mid 1800s.
For the first 100-125 years of America we had no INS or border security. Anyone who wanted to come here and get a job was welcome. About 100 years ago, in the middle of a global Great Depression, people like yourself became paranoid about the Chinese over running America and demanded limitations. Since that time the INS has regulated immigration. Not on the basis of need for workers, but which ethnic group we like the least.
Reagan never disassociated himself from his stance on immigration.
He was a man and could be wrong.
Sometimes he was right.
She didn't steal a car. She worked for a living and supported her mother and daughter you ****. Learn to read.
We also had no welfare state magnet and no social services. There was no incentive to remain here if there was no work, and there was no tax burden on the general population to support the families of immigrants.
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