|
The tension was high in suburban Atlanta last October when protesters confronted hundreds of illegal immigrants who were marching to demand the right to obtain driver's licenses.
The peaceful, sign-waving march soon turned ugly, as angry epithets were hurled back and forth across busy Buford Highway. “This is my country! You are criminals”! You cannot have my country,” shouted D.A. King, a former insurance salesman and self-styled anti-immigrant vigilante. Boos and hisses erupted from the mostly Hispanic immigrants across the street.
The heated exchange, caught by a CNN television crew, captured the intensifying debate over driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. Eleven states now issue such licenses, and several others are considering permitting similar laws, but a growing grass-roots movement opposes the licenses, including groups like the American Resistance Foundation, founded by King.
The immigrants' supporters say illegal workers are the backbone of the nation's economic success and that being able to drive legally would allow them to open bank accounts and do other tasks requiring an official identification card. It would also make America's roads safer, the proponents say, by holding immigrants to the same driving and insurance requirements as U.S. citizens. Unlicensed drivers are nearly five times more likely to be in a fatal crash than licensed drivers, and uninsured drivers cause 14 percent of all accidents, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
But King and others say uncontrolled immigration depresses wages, increases crime and causes neighborhood blight, and that granting undocumented workers driver's licenses would only legalize illegal behavior.
Until now the debate over immigrant driver's licenses has been restricted to a few traditional border states, like California, where a new law permitting undocumented workers to get licenses helped defeat Democratic Gov. Gray Davis during the 2003 gubernatorial recall election. Lawmakers repealed the law shortly after Arnold Schwarzenegger was inaugurated as governor, and Schwarzenegger has since vetoed related bills. He wants the licenses of undocumented workers to bear a unique mark.
Now the debate has moved to states throughout the country. In Utah and Tennessee, state laws now give illegal workers so-called “driving privilege cards,” which warn in bold, red letters they cannot be used as legal identification. New York state's motor-vehicles commissioner in April denied license renewals and suspended the licenses of illegal immigrants without a Social Security card or acceptable visa. The state's Supreme Court, which made a preliminary ruling rejecting the commissioner's action, is currently hearing the issue.
Now some in Congress want to jump into the fray — even though issuing driver's licenses has long been the domain of the states. In January, Wisconsin Republican Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. proposed the Real ID Act, which would establish national driver's license standards, toughen asylum requirements and speed completion of a fence on the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego. But the driver's license provision has caused the most debate.
“My bill's goal is straightforward: It seeks to prevent another 9/11-type attack by disrupting terrorist travel,” Sensenbrenner said. The bill would require states to verify that driver's-license applicants reside legally in the United States before issuing a license that could be used for federal identification purposes, such as boarding an airplane.
The bill, which Sensenbrenner attached to a “must-pass” emergency military-spending bill, was approved by the House, 261-161, on Feb. 10, and the Senate passed a different version, not including Real ID, on April 21. The House and the Senate are currently in conference to reconcile the two versions of the bill. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says passage is likely, and President Bush has said he will sign the measure.
The bill's supporters say providing secure driver's licenses to illegal immigrants would improve national security, because licenses are now the de facto form of identification in the United States. The 9/11 Commission, which investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, found that the attackers used driver's licenses rather than passports to avoid creating suspicion.
“At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft,” the commission's 2004 report noted, “sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists.”
During House debate, Sensenbrenner said that the Real ID bill might have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks because it requires that any license or ID card issued to visitors expire on the same date the person's visa expires.
Immigrants and community leaders in New York City protest on April 13, 2004, against a state policy that denies driver's licenses to hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The protest followed a crackdown on individuals without Social Security numbers. (Getty Images/Stephen Chernin)
|
“Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 murderers, entered the United States on a six-month visa [which] expired on July 9, 2001. He got a [six-month] driver's license from the state of Florida on May 5, 2001,” Sensenbrenner said. “Had this bill been in effect at the time, that driver's license would have expired on July 9, and he would not have been able to use that driver's license to get on a plane.”
Jack Martin, special projects director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which seeks to halt illegal immigration, says the difficulty of distinguishing between “illegal aliens merely looking for jobs and potential terrorists looking to carry out attacks” argues against granting licenses to non-citizens. “People who have entered the country illegally — regardless of their motives — should not be able to receive a driver's license,” he says.
But critics of the proposed law say denying driver's licenses to illegal immigrants would pose a greater threat to U.S. safety. “Allowing a driver the possibility to apply for a license to drive to work means that person's photograph, address and proof of insurance will be on file at the local DMV,” a recent Los Angeles Times editorial argued. “And that is something to make us all feel safer.”
The Real ID Act “threatens to handcuff state officials with impossible, untested mandates, such as requiring instant verification of birth certificates, without providing the time or resources needed,” says the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Moreover, says Joan Friedland, a policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, the law is just “smoke and mirrors” because it is “an inadequate and meaningless substitute for real, comprehensive reform and doesn't resolve the problem of national security.”
But Martin says a national law that coordinates driver's-license policies across the nation is vital to security. “Right now, there is virtually a different approach in every state,” he says. “People who wish to take advantage of the system can easily target whichever state has the most lax requirements.”
— Kate Templin
|
Read the Full Report (Subscription Required)
