As the federal government presses for the issuance of a new identity card, civil libertarians and advocates for immigrants say the plan will be a "nightmare" for New York State and are calling on Governor Eliot Spitzer to reject it.
The REAL ID Act, passed in 2005, requires states to comply with certain standards when they issue driver's licenses and identification cards if the licenses are to serve as accepted federal identification. States can issue licenses without meeting those guidelines, but the license then will not serve as proper identification for entering a federal facility or boarding a federally regulated commercial plane.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says the REAL IDs are intended to "prevent terrorism" and "reduce fraud." "Raising the security standards on driver's licenses establishes another layer of protection to prevent terrorists from obtaining and using fake documents to plan or carry out an attack," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in a March press release.
But the REAL ID Act has attracted a growing list of skeptics – both in the state and nationwide. Some oppose the REAL ID because it could force thousands of undocumented immigrants to lose the right to drive. Others fear the card could lay the foundation for the country's first "national ID card" and infringe on privacy. Additionally, worries abound about how New York would implement the high-tech and costly program, as well as the burden it would put on the state's Department of Motor Vehicles.
With a REAL ID, applicants must have all source documents concerning their identity, immigration status, date of birth and Social Security number verified with the original issuing agency. So, for example, the local health department might have to vouch for a person's birth certificate.
Applicants who pass muster would then receive a card that could be read by a machine, such as a scanner. Their personal information would be stored in a database that would allow information to be shared with other state. And their new card would enable them to enter federal offices and nuclear power plants, among other facilities.
But it might not stop there, according to Udi Ofer, legislative counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union. Some members of Congress are reportedly trying to require a REAL ID for an increasing number of activities, including applying for a new job or getting a federal housing subsidy.
At the same time, though, the REAL ID is encountering widespread resistance. States are not required to implement the REAL ID Act and can decide if and how to apply it. Lawmakers in Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Montana, and Washington already have passed legislation opposing the act, and nearly two dozen other states have similar legislation pending. Critics of the REAL ID in New York would like to see the state follow suit. In pressing their case they raise a number of objections to the REAL ID.
Privacy
Civil libertarians fear that the databases required by the act will give state and government officials an eagle-eye view of individuals' movements and increased access to their personal information. Some worry it could be a step toward establishing a national identity card.
Homeland security department officials dismiss such concerns. In its proposed regulations, department officials wrote, "Neither the REAL ID Act nor these proposed regulations gives the federal government any greater access to information than it had before."
In response to concerns about the database, the department wrote that the act does not create a centralized database on all drivers "because it leaves the decision of how to conduct the exchanges in the hands of the states. Moreover, no federal agency will operate the data exchanges affecting non-commercial driver's licensing."
Ofer called the department's position "absurd." He said, "Under the REAL ID Act, every database maintained in every state across the country will be linked to one another. So the government in New York will be able to access information about a citizen living Wisconsin and look at that person's birth certificate, driving records and other identifiable information. And all of these databases will be linked to a federal database."
Civil libertarians are also warning that the card's required "machine-readable technology" could give the government and others the ability to track individuals. And while the homeland security does not stipulate the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, which can be used to scrutinize consumers' buying habits, it does say, "states may independently choose to implement an RFID."
The department did not respond to requests for an interview.
Effects on Immigrants
The REAL ID Act could have a major impact on immigrants in New York. Amy Sugimori, director of La Fuente, immigrant advocacy group, does not think that that is an accident. She points out the measure was sponsored by U.S. Representative James Sennsenbrenner of Wisconsin who once sponsored a bill that would have provided additional criminal penalties for aiding and abetting illegal immigration. As for the REAL ID law, she said, "What was clear was that it was intended to be very much a punitive measure against immigrants."
Opponents of the REAL ID Act fear that, if New York implements it, many undocumented immigrants could lose their driver's licenses. One of the documents an applicant must submit is proof of immigration status and undocumented immigrants, of course, do not have that.
Manuel, who asked only to be identified by his first name, said that linking the REAL IDs to driving privileges could be devastating for immigrant communities. Manuel, originally from Ecuador, lives in Queens and is a member of the New York Civic Participation Project. "Everyone needs a driver's license to get to work, to take their children to school, or to drive to the hospital in an emergency situation," he said. "But [REAL ID] means that no one can have a driver's license if you're not a legal immigrant.
Sugimori said the two-tiered system where only some people have access to driver's licenses is bad public policy. "A system that drives people underground and divides people based on status is worrisome, because it isn't good for community relations," she said.
Restricting driver's licenses could have a major impact on the state's economy as well. For example, a high percentage of workers in the state's key agricultural industry are immigrants who need driver's licenses to get to their jobs in rural areas.
In the past, Spitzer has supported driver's licenses for immigrants. "The facts show that restricting immigrants' access to driver's licenses does nothing to improve security. All it does is drive immigrants into the shadows, creating a class of people with no public records," a Spitzer spokesperson said in 2006.
Some advocates for immigrants also fear that the REAL ID law unnecessarily stigmatizes them. In April, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows urged Spitzer to reject a law that "equates immigrants with terrorists." In a statement, the organization said, "We are deeply troubled that 9/11 is again being used as a means to justify legislation which unfairly targets immigrants and jeopardizes the privacy of United States citizens."
Much of the work of determining the authenticity of individuals' documents and trying to decipher immigration status will fall on people who staff the state's Department of Motor Vehicles office. This concerns Sugimori. "What kind of arbitrary decisions are going to be made based on appearance?" she said.
"It's not the role of a state motor vehicle agency to become immigration enforcement agencies," said Ofer. "It's bad public policy to drive people into the shadows."
Cost and Efficiency
If the REAL ID was implemented in New York, residents wanting a license would be required to go in person to motor vehicle offices and provide original identification documents. The Department of Motor Vehicles agent would then have to verify the identification documents with the agency that first issued them.
"There's no question that because of the new demands on DMV staff, New Yorkers will confront much slower service, longer lines and a huge number of technical glitches," Ofer said.
He predicted that some New Yorkers could lose driving privileges until they can prove their identity. "People move around, birth certificates may have been lost in fires, people may have been born at a time when birth certificates were not widely available," he said.
For its part, the state Department of Motor Vehicles has estimated that it will cost the state $84 million a year to issue the REAL IDs. The department also estimated that it could take state residents six times as long to renew their licenses under a REAL ID program than it now takes.
"The proposed regulations raise issues as to efficacy, privacy, cost, and even the federal government's own faith in the system as an anti-terrorist tool," state motor vehicles commissioner David Swarts said in a statement.
The REAL ID program is expected to be funded partly from the by the Homeland Security Grant Program, which provides money to states. But people wanting a license would have to pick up part of the tab as well. "I think the concept, though, was that this—like all driver's licenses—is largely a fee-based system, and that, ultimately, the cost of building REAL ID should be amortized over the driver's license fee," Chertoff said in congressional testimony.
While an array of organizations in New York continue to lobby the governor to resist the act, the state's intentions remain unclear. In the letter to the homeland security, Commissioner Swarts said the DMV current intends to offer New Yorkers the option of obtaining REAL ID. However, he has also said, "New York State will continue to evaluate its position as more information becomes available." The department would not comment on the REAL ID act for this article, and Spitzer's office did not return an interview request by press time.
Theoretically the state could opt to issue two types of licenses – a REAL ID license and the old-fashioned one. But Ofer said this would not be a good solution. If New York did that, he said, "a conventional driver's license will become a scarlet letter, telling the world that the bearer of the driver's license may be undocumented." That, he continued, "would lead to widespread discrimination against New York's immigrant communties, as well as against anyone who may be perceived to be a foreigner."
Instead advocates just want to do away with the REAL ID entirely. "If you really want to focus on what's good for a community, or what's good government," said La Fuente's Sugimori, this is not the right system."
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After several months of heated debate over how to reform our nation's immigration laws, the Senate's vote last week essentially killing the administration’s bill temporarily put the brakes on an issue of tremendous national importance. The vote on cloture, which would have ended debate and moved the bill toward a final vote, failed by a margin of 46 to 53.
Immigrant groups in New York reacted with a mixture of disappointment and a determination to continue working on an issue that clearly is not going away. "This is a chance to regroup and relaunch our efforts until we achieve real and fair immigration reform," Guillermo Chacon of the Salvadoran American National Network told the Daily News.
"I think the message for today is that this is not the end, that this is the beginning of a larger struggle," said Jose Calderon, vice president with the Hispanic Federation, in an interview with NY1.
"The Senate's failure to arrive at a solution is no excuse for the House to sit on its hands and do nothing," said Chung-Wha Hong of the New York Immigration Coalition (the organization for which I work) in a statement.
The Recap: The House Stalls
The 110th Congress first took up the immigration reform debate on March 22, 2007, when Representative Luis Guttierez, a Democrat of Illinois, and Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, introduced the Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act, or the STRIVE Act. Despite flaws in the bill, many advocates viewed it as a sincere attempt at bipartisan solutions for a broken immigration system.
The STRIVE Act has 72 co-sponsors. But rather than move on that or any other immigration bill, the House chose to delay its debate on immigration reform. The leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who chairs the immigration subcommittee, made the political calculation that they did not want to expose new Democratic members of the House, many of whom won their seats by narrow margins, to such a divisive and emotional vote without seeing the Senate pass a bill first. Consequently, the House put off a legislative debate on immigration and instead held a series of hearings intended to build consensus for any future immigration bill the House might consider.
A Secret, Doomed Bargain
Soon after the introduction of the STRIVE Act, the White House began organizing a group of Senate Republicans and later a handful of Senate Democrats to negotiate a deal for immigration reform. From the beginning, this backroom process shut out many lawmakers, advocates and the American people. Immigrant advocates also said the closed-door process ended up legitimizing the restrictive positions of senators, such as Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, who drove an incredibly hard bargain, threatening to walk away at various points in the negotiations. In the end, the Republicans successfully pressured the Democrats to make enormous concessions in order to keep their coalition intact.
After nearly three months of private negotiations with the White House, the senators involved in this process, including Democrats Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Ken Salazar of Colorado as well as a number of Senate Republicans, announced their "Grand Bargain." This bill did not reflect the immigrant rights movement's vision for immigration reform.
Among its most egregious provisions, the "Grand Bargain" would have dismantled the current family-based immigration system in favor of a point-based system that put more emphasis on education and employment experience than family relationships. It would have created a new underclass of workers by establishing a guest worker program with no real path to citizenship. And it would have dramatically expanded detention and deportation laws, effectively reducing the number of people who would be able to gain and keep lawful permanent residency.
Both anti-immigrant forces and pro-reform forces sharply criticized the bill. Opponents mounted serious procedural and substantive challenges to what many saw as the deeply flawed Senate bill.
On June 7, the Senate was unable to move toward a final vote on the bill, failing to produce the 60 votes necessary. The immigrant rights movement then called on the Senate to resume debate and not let this important issue simply go away. With the second failed cloture motion on June 28, however, immigration reform faces significant delays.
Doing Nothing is Not an Option
Many in the media and some in Congress have interpreted the Senate’s failure to move forward last week as the death of immigration reform. But that would be unacceptable. Congress has the responsibility to take up the important issue of reforming our country's immigration laws. Failure of a procedural vote may mean this particular Senate bill goes away, but in no way does it mean that the suffering of immigrant communities, the exploitation of workers, the devastation felt by separated families or the violations of immigrants' civil rights and human dignity will go away. Lawmakers have an obligation to find rational and humane solutions to fix our broken immigration system.
Avideh Moussavian is director of immigration policy and advocacy with The New York Immigration Coalition.
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Linda Teoh has been waiting for a chance to visit her homeland for years. After landing at Kennedy Airport in Queens 10 years ago, she has missed all the family get-togethers, including her brother's wedding, the birth of her nieces, and her father's funeral. She knows that if she leaves the U.S., she will not be able to return for a long time because she has overstayed her visa.
A native of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Teoh is one of an estimated 400,000 immigrants in New York City who have a home that they cannot go back to. A hard worker who is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, Teoh has worked her way up from a waitress to become an assistant manager in an upscale restaurant in Manhattan. "The money is good in the restaurant business, but I miss my family so much."
Teoh's waiting might come to an end soon. The new immigration bill, which proposes to allow undocumented immigrants to gain legal status if they meet the requirements, may be her last hope. "If this new bill doesn't work out, I am going to get a paper marriage," she said.
While Teoh thinks the immigration bill could help her, many immigrant advocacy groups object to current versions of the measure. "The present immigration proposal is not acceptable on many fronts," said Sonia Ivany, president of the NY Chapter of the Labor Council on Latin American Advancement has said. "Labor unions and immigrant workers cannot accept a system that's founded on inequality and will create a large temporary workforce devoid of worker rights."
And John Delgado, business manager of union local 79, which represents construction and general building laborers, called the bill "a slap in the face of all the immigrants who have sacrificed their lives to build what we have today."
Immigration reform is being hotly debated on Capitol Hill. After long negotiations, the Senate passed its version, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on May 25. The Senate version proposes to strengthen border security, establish a guest-worker program and provide the means for millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the country and possibly become citizens. It also calls for 370 miles of triple-layer fencing along the Mexican border and making English the country's national language.
"This is the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history," Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a co-sponsor of the Senate version, told the Washington Post. "It is a comprehensive and realistic attempt to solve the real-world problems that have festered for too long in our broken immigration system."
Meanwhile, the House version, sponsored by Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Jeff Flake of Arizona, is entitled the STRIVE Act of 2007 (Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act). It also proposes to tighten border control and security check and favors skilled-immigrant workers over family-based immigration.
Under immigration proposals, an illegal immigrant who entered the U.S. before January 1, 2007 could receive a four-year, renewable Z visa and gain probationary legal status after paying $5,000 in fines and fees. Z visa holders will be able to apply for green cards after a series of security and background checks. They will also have to wait in the back of the line after all existing applicants, a wait that could take is eight to 13 years.
President George W. Bush has endorsed comprehensive immigration reform. "This is a good piece of legislation," he said in a briefing on comprehensive immigration reform on June 1. "This bill is one that says, we recognize that you're here illegally and there's a consequence for it. We can argue about the consequences, but you can't argue about the fact that there are consequences in this bill for people who have broken our law."
''No matter how difficult it may seem for some politically, I strongly believe it's in this nation's interest for people here in Washington to show courage and resolve and pass a comprehensive immigration reform,'' added the president.
But a number of aspects of the bill remain controversial. In the center of the debate is the bill's proposed merit-based "points system." It would evaluate applicants for permanent residency on a point system that would give high priorities to education and employment, while not putting as much emphasis on family ties as the current system does. An applicant would need a minimum of 55 to 100 points to be considered for permanent residency. A graduate degree would count for 20 points, while a specialty or high-demand occupation would count counts for 16 to 20 points. An immigrant would receive only eight points for having an adult son or daughter who is a U.S. citizen.
At a recent rally on the steps of New York's City Hall, advocacy groups for immigrants expressed opposition to the point system. "If this bill is passed in its current form, it will divide our families, hurt our communities, and weaken our nation," said Moises Perez, president of Alianza Dominicana. "We cannot support a bill that turns its back on family reunification, worker's rights and provides an unfair and unworkable legalization process for our immigrants."
"The proposed bargain… undermines our family-based immigration system," said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, in a statement.
The reduced emphasis on family would have a particular impact on New York, some experts say. "Mom and pop stores in New York have been a very dynamic force in the making of American society, and I would not want to see that possibility foreclosed," Gary Gerstle, a historian of immigration, told the Times.
A system geared more to skilled labor could create problems for New York City, according to David Reimers, an emeritus immigration historian at N.Y.U. "Like all big cities, it depends on unskilled labor," he said.
Another controversial provision in the bill is the guest worker program. The proposed new Y visa will allow as many as 400,000 guest workers to work in the U.S. for two years. The visa is renewable for up to three times but workers have to go home for a year between each time.
Chung-Wha Hong said the guest worker program would hurt immigrants and other Americans as well. In a statement issued after the Senate bill was introduced, she said it "promotes exploitation of low-wage workers in a permanent underclass and drives down wages and working condition for all American workers."
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also objects to the guest worker plan, largely because of the requirement that workers leave after two years. Calling the proposal a "joke," he told the New York Times. "Nobody could ever enforce that. Nobody in their right mind would ever do it." However, he supported the provisions in the new bill that allow undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status.
While Bloomberg praised the bill for rejecting mass deportations of immigrants who are here illegally, he expressed reservations about the overall proposal. Many members of Congress who support it, he said, should "look back on their history and realize that if we had had the laws that they are proposing in many cases, they wouldn't be here because their parents or grandparents would not have been here."
On the other hand, according to a poll by CBS and the New York Times released on May 25, the new immigration reform proposal is gaining support among Americans. More than half of those polled said priorities should be given to immigrants with education, job skills and work experience. About two thirds of those polled said illegal immigrants should get a renewable visa if they pay a fine, have a clean record and pass a background check. A majority of 62 percent said illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at least two years should be allowed to apply for legal status.
The House and Senate will try to hammer out their differences and agree on a bill later this month.
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