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A City ID Card for All


M. Zywicka started working as a hostess in an Italian restaurant in Murray Hill just a month after she arrived in New York. A native of Krakow, Poland, Zywicka (who does not want her full name used) came to New York on a tourist visa in June. Like countless foreigners living in this expensive city, she struggles to support herself by working off the books. But she has to be careful with the cash she earns because she doesn’t have the identification needed to open a bank account.

“ I pay everything in cash,” said Zywicka. “Sometimes I use my Polish credit card but I don’t like it because the service charge is too expensive.” Not having an ID also prevents her from getting a regular cell phone. ”I have to use a pre-paid phone so I don’t get those free minutes at night and on the weekend,” she said.

In an effort to help people like Zywicka gain access to services that require an ID, City Councilmember Hiram Monserrate of Queens wants the city to issue IDs to anyone who wants one, including undocumented immigrants. He is sponsoring a bill, the Municipal Identification Card Program Act or Intro 602, to accomplish this.

“The City of New York is home to 8 million people, many of them immigrants and some of them frankly, undocumented,” said Monserrate. “Some of them have been residents of the city for many years, and to give them a basic ID card that’s valid within the city limits only makes sense.”

“ It is my hope that this card will be the city’s first step in using the benefits of technology to allow residents not only access to public safety resources, but more convenient and stream-lined services,” he added.

A Card for the Undocumented

The proposed local law would require the city's Human Rights Commission to create a New York City Municipal Identification Card, which would feature a resident's name, address and photo. Applicants would need to provide only proof of identity and residency within New York City. They would not have to disclose their immigration status. Currently the standard form of identification is a driver's license or a non-driver’s license identification card issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles. To get that kind of identification, an applicant must present a Social Security number or tax identification number and other government-issued documents.

Monserrate’s proposed ID card would allow holders to take out library books and would help emergency workers identify them in case of an emergency. Also, undocumented immigrants with the ID will be able to report crimes and take advantage of city services they are entitled to but need an ID to obtain.

The proposal is partly inspired by the City of New Haven, which became the first city to provide IDs to undocumented immigrants in July. Within about a month, it issued about 3,000 cards. The card, called the Elm City Resident Card, costs $10 for adults and $5 for children, and has a debit card feature that can be used in municipal parking lots and participating stores.

According to the New Haven Independent, an online news publication, several municipalities from around the country are looking at similar proposals, including Miami-Dade County and cities in California, Nevada, Kentucky, Maryland, Wisconsin and Arizona.

Removing Barriers…

Monserrate, a former police officer, said the proposal shares the spirit of the city's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which prohibits city employees from asking residents for confidential information, including immigration status, and reporting it to a local, state or federal government agency.

“For many New Yorkers, the lack of government-issued photo identification is a substantial barrier to employment and other necessities,” said John Liu, one of 21 City Council members who have signed on to sponsor the bill. “Not only will a city ID card enhance individual opportunities, but it will also help ensure equal access to municipal services.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who believes that illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay if they pay back taxes and fines and follow the rules to apply for legal status, did not issue any official statement on the matter. He was quoted by the Queens Chronicle as saying that the city needs to give permanent status to the millions of illegal immigrants already living here and move on.

Meanwhile, the proposal also received support from some elected officials at the state level.

State Senator Ruben Diaz said the bill will “close the loophole that has done nothing but drive many New Yorkers underground out of fear of our city health and safety officials.”

Jose Peralta, a member of the State Assembly from Queens, told the Daily News that the card would improve the city’s security. “An ID card should dispel the concerns of all those who fear an underground society of undocumented immigrants that no one can identify,” Peralta said. “Now we will know who is who. In terms of security, it is a very positive step.”

… Or a Threat to Security?

But the New York bill has also attracted some opposition. City Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. of Queens said the proposed ID violates federal law and sends the wrong message about the country’s immigrant policy. “This card is a clear attempt to circumvent our immigration laws,” Vallone said. “Just being in our country does not entitle you to being a citizen.”

“ It’s not the place of New York City to undermine the federal government’s albeit pathetic attempts to secure our borders,” Vallone continued. “With the threat of terrorism still over our heads, we certainly should not be doing anything to make it easier to come here illegally, board planes and otherwise blend into our society unnoticed.”

Zywicka, the Polish restaurant hostess, also has doubts about the bill. She said she would be hesitant to take up the city's offer of an identification card, even if the bill is passed.

" I am afraid to leave my information with any 'official' authority," she said, adding that she doesn't want the government to be able to track her down. "I would like to keep a distance. It is not necessary for me to get this ID. I have my Polish IDs in my wallet and should be able to be identified if any accident happens."

The bill was introduced on July 25 and is currently under review by the City Council’s Committee on Governmental Operation.

Larry Tung, a native of Taiwan, teaches media and film courses at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. A resident of Brooklyn, he is also a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant and Asian American issues.  

 

The Legislature Acts, Doesn't Act and Reacts


Members of the New York State Senate and Assembly always go on a wild ride in the last few weeks of the session, passing bills by the bucketful, and ignoring others in the rush to adjourn. This year was no different, and when the dust settled – and the legislators had gone home – 2007 turned out to be at best a mixed year for advocates of greater civil rights and liberties.

Consider three bills before the legislature: one on gay marriage, one on the rights of accused rapists (and, not incidentally, the health of rape survivors) and one on transgender rights.

Same-Sex Marriage

In June, the State Assembly became only the third legislative body in the nation to pass a bill opening marriage to same-sex couples. (The other two such votes came in California where they were met by a veto from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.) The New York measure was a program bill submitted by Governor Eliot Spitzer, the first governor in U.S. history to propose such legislation. And it was guided to victory by openly gay Assemblymember Danny O’Donnell of the Upper West Side, who made personal appeals to scared and wavering colleagues. His efforts yielded a positive vote from Speaker Sheldon Silver, an Orthodox Jew who began public life opposed to gay rights, and an 85-61 victory, not overwhelming in a house with a 60-seat Democratic margin but beyond the expectations of most observers.

Earlier in the session, State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno made it clear that his house would not take up the same-sex marriage bill. “This governor has his priorities wrong,” Bruno said in April.

Spitzer conceded he did not think the bill had “a realistic shot” at being passed but said he was introducing the measure “because it's a statement of principle that I believe in and I want to begin that dynamic.”

The marriage equality bill enjoys broad progressive support, including backing from many unions and religious groups, mostly organized by the Empire State Pride Agenda, the state’s leading lobby group on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.

Despite the breakthrough in the Assembly, opening marriage to gay and lesbian couples remains a heavy lift in New York. Beyond the predictable opposition from conservative Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders and the Conservative Party, it does not enjoy the support of Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton. They favor only civil unions, which they say will deliver all the rights of marriage while reserving that institution for heterosexual couples.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, perversely, came out for same-sex marriage in 2005 on the day he announced his appeal of the only court decision in New York mandating it. His action deprived advocates of same-sex marriage of the opportunity to go to the Court of Appeals in 2006 with thousands of gay couples from the city who would have been legally married. In July 2006, the state’s highest court ultimately ruled 4-2 against a constitutional right of gay couples to marry.

Earlier this year, the Conservative Party tried to use the issue in a special election for a State Senate seat on Long Island, distributing fliers saying that electing the Republican candidate was the only hope for stopping gay marriage. But Democrat Craig Johnson, a supporter of same-sex marriage, won, reducing the Republican majority to two.

Most political observers believe that the Democrats are poised to regain a majority in a Senate that has been in Republican hands for most of the last 75 years. But unless there is a Democratic landslide in 2008, any new Democratic majority will be slim and not necessarily inclined to pass a controversial bill on same-sex marriage right away.

Transgender Rights

When the legislature finally passed a bill adding “sexual orientation” to the human rights law in 2002, it became the 13th state to do so. (The first was Wisconsin in 1981.)

New York balked, however, at including transgender rights in the human rights law 2002, and the Empire State Pride Agenda did not insist on it at the time. Today, discrimination on basis of “gender identity and expression” is illegal in 13 states -- including New Jersey, which acted this year -- and the District of Columbia. New York, though, still has no state law on the issue.

To remedy that, advocates have proposed a stand-alone bill called the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, GENDA for short. Transgender activists such as Donna Cartwright argue that the push for this measure has not been nearly as intense as the advocacy work for the marriage bill. It did not even get a vote in the Assembly, let alone the Senate. “GENDA needs extra emphasis to have a real chance of passage. And [the Pride Agenda]… has a real responsibility to give it that boost,” she wrote.

Alan Van Capelle, the Pride Agenda’s executive director, said that the group pushed hard on transgender rights this year and managed to get 95 sponsors in the Assembly, more than enough votes for passage – and 10 more than the number of members who voted for the marriage act. “One piece missing is that GENDA doesn’t have a Danny O’Donnell [chief sponsor of the marriage bill] who is going to work it every day,” he said.

Van Capelle also said that the marriage issue benefited from being in the papers and the public consciousness. “Legislators aren’t as educated about transgender issues,” he said.

HIV Tests for Rape Suspects

When Eliot Spitzer successfully ran for attorney general in 1998, his ad campaign featured a rape survivor complaining that a rape suspect cannot be force-tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, “until after he’s convicted, maybe years later, which may be too late.” Spitzer proposed a law that would give rape victims the right to get rape suspects tested and the results supplied to them.

At the time, Spitzer’s proposal was condemned as “demagogic” by AIDS activists and his opponents in the race and lambasted by everyone from the state health department to the National Organization for Women. They said this issue presented a dangerous distraction from what rape survivors need to do vis-Ă -vis HIV -- commence a regimen of drugs within two to 36 hours of exposure that can prevent HIV from taking hold in their systems. Even if an immediate HIV result from a suspect was negative, the survivor of the attack needs to take the drugs in case the alleged perpetrator’s HIV infection is so recent that it does not show up in a test.

Results from a suspected or convicted rapist are “irrelevant,” AIDS specialist Dr. Howard Grossman said then. “If I were a rape victim, I’d be taking post-exposure prophylaxis no matter what the status of the perpetrator,” he told me at the time.

The New York State health department established a protocol for survivors of rape in 1998 that urged them to take the drugs necessary to prevent HIV infection immediately -- or at least within 36 hours.

During his eight years as attorney general, Spitzer did not publicly press for the HIV testing. Once he got elected governor, however, he resumed his quest for it, and it passed with overwhelming majorities in both houses of the legislature.

O’Donnell, one of 21 members of the Assembly to oppose Spitzer on the bill, said passage was “emotionally understandable, but the science was not out there.” State Sen. Tom Duane, the only legislator who is open about being HIV-positive, also came out against the measure. “This bill does nothing to protect victims and may do harm,” he said in an interview.

Andrea Mitchell, a rape survivor who works for Housing Works, an AIDS agency that worked to defeat the bill, wrote in the Albany Times Union that it fails to provide post-exposure drugs to survivors of rape and “focuses obsessively on the HIV status of the perpetrators of rape at the expense of their actual victims.” The bill as amended would only apply to suspects who have been indicted, something that almost never happens within 36 hours.

The measure was opposed by the New York Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Planned Parenthood, New York Civil Liberties Union and the YWCA.

Spitzer argues the testing would help survivors of sex crimes. His spokesperson told the New York Times, “The governor believes that a victim of rape or sexual assault needs to know as soon as possible the HIV status of their attacker. This information is critical to the physical and emotional well-being of the victim.”

Assemblymember Nettie Mayersohn championed Spitzer’s bill in the Assembly, chastising critics like Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “Their whole program is to protect the infected person, not the victim,” she told the New York Post.

Gay Men’s Health Crisis lobbied against the bill, but did not organize the kind of public outcry from the public health establishment that might have defeated the proposal. Indeed, despite the fact that the group’s executive director, Marjorie Hill, is a former assistant commissioner for HIV/AIDS Services at the New York City health department, she was either unable or unwilling to get the city department to speak out against it. A spokesperson for the department refused to make an on-the-record comment about whether or not the bill was good or bad for public health.

Many legislators feared that by voting against the bill, they could leave themselves open to attacks that they were soft on rapists. Indeed, just after the session ended, the State Senate Republican Campaign Committee set up a web site called New Yorkers in Jeopardy, targeting Democrats who voted against this bill accusing them of “not protecting us” and “not recognizing that a rape victim has a right to know if their rapist has HIV.”

Assemblymember Crystal Peoples of Buffalo acknowledged being “confused” during the floor debate, but she voted for the bill anyway. Assemblymember Patricia Eddington of Patchogue, a clinical social worker, at first condemned it as “feel good legislation,” but after two amendments were added voted for it. Assemblymember Charles Levine of Glen Cove said, “I don’t know whether this is a just bill,” but he voted for it anyway saying that “part of the healing process means that someone’s got to feel safe.”

Some members resisted. Deborah Glick of Greenwich Village said that the only way to determine if a rape survivor has been infected “rests with the victim and that information is not provided by testing someone else.” Ellen Jaffee, a member of the Assembly from Pearl River, said the bill provided “false hope” and is “neither grounded in science nor appropriate public health policy.”

Mixed Message

Some opponents of the bill worry about what it says about the governor. While Michael Kink of Housing Works praises the governor’s competence, he said Spitzer’s “willingness to choose the soundbite is a serious flaw.” Kink said administration officials leaned on the state health department to provide a letter of support for the bill.

Other observers do not discern an obvious pattern on the part of the governor or legislature. Assemblymember Dick Gottfried of Chelsea said, “I don’t know if there is a pattern or theme to the actions of the legislature in these three bills….Each of these issues has its own pluses and minuses and merits and politics.” Gottfried voted for the marriage bill, against the AIDS bill and could not get his transgender rights bill to the floor.

Van Capelle of the Pride Agenda agreed. “I don’t think the legislature acts in thematic ways. You can see them doing things that seem to contradict each other.”

Andy Humm, a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights, has been in charge of the civil rights topic page since its inception in 2001. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (34 on Time-Warner; 107 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.  

Immersed in English


Martha Escobar, a speech pathologist in her native Colombia, wanted to pursue a similar career after she moved to New York City three years ago. But her limited English proved a barrier. Then she learned about a language immersion program at Borough of Manhattan Community College. After pursuing those classes, along with coursework in speech pathology at Lehman College, she has started working in her field, interning in a program for autistic children in the Bronx.

Her English has improved as well, she said. "My boyfriend is French, and now I correct him when we speak in English,” she said.

Students like Escobar are hardly unusual at City University of New York these days. Campus-wide applications to the City University of New York are up 16 percent from last year. Approximately one-third of the applicants are immigrants for whom English is not their first language and many more are first-generation children of immigrants. Attending college can make an enormous difference in their lives: According to the recent book Passing the Torch by CUNY sociologists Paul Attewell and Steve Lavin, U.S. immigrants who receive at least some post-secondary education significantly increase their children’s chances of getting a college education and, in turn, raising their children’s social, intellectual and economic level. At the same time, CUNY has introduced policies designed to raise it educational standards.

All of this has increased pressure on City University and other New York institutions to create more facilities and programs for English language. “Learning a new language well enough to perform well in college is an enormous task and requires work on many different skills,” says Ellen Balleisen, a CUNY language instructor for over 20 years. These skills take time and active assistance to learn.

IMMERSED IN LANGUAGE

CUNY’s traditional programs for speakers of other languages serve many students, particularly those who already have a strong base in English. These classes provide a valuable bridge to regular college courses by giving the students a semester or two of language learning in reading, writing, speaking and listening.

But for some students these more conventional programs do not offer enough. To address that, 12 years ago, Leslee Oppenheim, director of literacy programs at CUNY, started the CUNY Language Immersion Program (CLIP) for students with extensive language needs. It is designed to be an academic program for committed immigrant students with little background in English. Students spend 25 hours a week in class, focusing on a theme, Utopia, say, or an aspect of America, rather than on language instruction per se. This borrows from a concept used in many entry-level composition and humanities college courses nationwide.

Oppenheim says the approach offers a number of benefits. “There’s the intensive nature of the program – 25 hours a week is the foremost qualifier,” she said. “The theme-based content provides a language learning experience based more on a college course model. I think we provide a rehearsal for the content they’ll find their freshman year.”

CLIP is now a department at all CUNY community colleges and at three four-year schools: City College of Technology, York College and College of Staten Island. The immersion program provides a number of benefits not offered by more traditional English as a second language courses.

Time

While standard English programs for speakers of other languages offer 12 to 18 hours of course work a week, the standard academic week for CLIP is 25 contact hours per week, with the same professor. This gives students a substantial amount of in-class time with one instructor who can focus on an integrated language program.” That’s pivotal for people who have the time to devote to the workload,” says Oliver Mann, an instructor both at CLIP and in standard English language courses. “CLIP really helps them manage their time, because in college classes freshmen, probably immigrant and non-immigrant, have to spend a lot more time on reading and homework.”

Focus

While traditional English classes often focus on isolated lessons in grammar and English, in the CLIP program each semester’s course is thematic, with professors developing introductory-level courses in their area of expertise. All reading, writing, speaking and grammar instruction is focused around the texts students read related to that theme. “We make content the umbrella under which the language learning fits,” said Oppenheim, although she added, “We are not pretending to teach, say, history or science per se, but using it as a broad-based concept to teach English.”

Sirina Gouni, a CLIP student, praised this approach. She said she found her theme -- American Folk -- fascinating, and the program, she said, made her “feel very confident as a college student.” The more intensive nature of CLIP, said Yennifer Santana, provided her with the opportunity to do more demanding work, such as researching papers, writing numerous essays and reading books.

Cost

Standard English language programs cost as much as regular classes, roughly $2,000 full-time per semester at the four-year campuses and $1,400 per semester at the community colleges. The classes do not count toward graduation though, which means, for the most part, students learning English spend one or two semesters of their financial aid before taking a course toward graduation. Funds for CLIP, on the other hand, come largely from the government, so students pay only $180 per semester for 25 hours a week of class time. “Less than 10 percent comes from student fees,” said Gil Gerena, CLIP director for New York City College of Technology.

FACING THE FUTURE

After 12 years, CLIP is now serving over 3,000 conditionally admitted CUNY students and seems to have finally shed the “experimental” label.

But it still faces challenges. One of the greatest drawbacks for some CLIP students is their detachment from many of the “regular” students. Some do not even attend classes on their school’s main campus. Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Language Immersion Program, for example, has been located a 140 blocks from the downtown campus on 125th Street in an effort to keep a presence for the college uptown.

Another major problem CLIP faces is one it shares with other English-language programs at CUNY. “I think the biggest challenge is the very low salaries for teachers,” says Balleisen, who is CLIP’s primary advocate at the Professional Staff Conference, the CUNY faculty union. The CLIP instructors, she explains, are considered part- time even though they spend more than twice as much time in the classroom as full-time CUNY faculty.

When CLIP started, its teachers received a higher salary than a starting New York City public school teacher with a master’s degree. Today, according to Balleisen, “this situation has reversed quite dramatically.”

In general, CUNY has a wonderful problem on its hands – a surplus of qualified, motivated immigrant students who need a small additional initial investment before they can reap continuing long-term benefits for the New York City community. More intensive language learning programs like CLIP can help fill the gap, if the City University agrees takes the steps to strengthen it.

An immigrant from Bangkok, Thailand, Chaleampon Ritthichai is the editor of The Citizen. 



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