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."
I picked voting rights and big important issues because they are glaring examples of exceptions to your theory. I could also pick the gradual acceptance of women and blacks into public schools and universities. That didn't take a war. Or the right to marry out side of ones own race. Or work in fields not traditionally acceptable for women. The right not to be discriminated when purchasing a house or renting.
You picked Gambling as a right that has been infringed. Here is a link to the state of Montana that shows gambling was illegal in the Montana at the inception of it's constitution but as years and as Montana's population grew the restrictions against gambling were eased.
http://www.doj.state.mt.us/gaming/historygambling.asp
You are a funny guy. You argue that constitutional amendments are not routine and should not be considered as evidence of expanded rights, yet you include prohibition as evidence of your theory...and prohibition was repealed. You got big balls neverdem.
Confiscate the license, grab the perp, and DEPORT them, please.
There's no intent at comedy. The examples that you chose were "zebras". If you can't recognize their historical uniqueness, i.e. major wars and constitutional amendments implemented in their aftermath, or the Prohibition of Alcohol and its subsequent, sole repeal as a Constitutional Amendment, then maybe history is a subject that you should avoid, just as you avoided all of my other arguments against open borders.
Those Constitutional Amendments to which I refer are the Bill of Rights, adopted in the aftermath of the Revolution and eventual Constitutional Convention, those numbered 13, 14 and 15 after the Civil War, and 18 and 21 which were Alcohol Prohibition and its subsequent repeal. That's a majority of the Amendments. They don't happen frequently. Look at the commotion with the proposed amendment to ban same sex marriages.
How can you compare the rarity of the Constitution and its Amendments, which is supposedly the supreme law of the land, to the surfeit of more than 20,000 laws which infringe upon the Second Amendment, i.e. the natural right of self defense, let alone all the other laws, decrees and regulations issued by the democratic governmental entities within this country?
You can not cite the justifiable expansion of rights to females and blacks without recognizing the loss of privilege and rights which white males had previously claimed, to their obvious detriment.
You picked Gambling as a right that has been infringed. Here is a link to the state of Montana that shows gambling was illegal in the Montana at the inception of it's constitution but as years and as Montana's population grew the restrictions against gambling were eased.
Singling out the example of gambling is illuminating. Most state governments made gambling legal by starting state lotteries once they decided that they needed to increase revenue, with the ruse that those funds would be dedicated to education, even though the revenue was commingled with all other government revenue.
I can't avoid saying the obvious. You are being obstinate in refusing to recognize the general proposition that more government means less freedom for individuals at their expense for the benefit of those in the majority.
After almost five years at this forum, you can't avoid the following quote:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" Benjamin Franklin(1706 - 1790)
That is because I don't believe it to be correct, and I have given a dozen reasons to prove my point. I can give more but I doubt it will change your obstinate refusal to recognize that anarchy doesn't mean more freedom.
Romans 13:1-6
1 Obey the government, for God is the one who put it there. All governments have been placed in power by God. 2 So those who refuse to obey the laws of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow. 3 For the authorities do not frighten people who are doing right, but they frighten those who do wrong. So do what they say, and you will get along well. 4 The authorities are sent by God to help you. But if you are doing something wrong, of course you should be afraid, for you will be punished. The authorities are established by God for that very purpose, to punish those who do wrong. 5 So you must obey the government for two reasons: to keep from being punished and to keep a clear conscience. 6 Pay your taxes, too, for these same reasons. For government workers need to be paid so they can keep on doing the work God intended them to do.
You can not cite the justifiable expansion of rights to females and blacks without recognizing the loss of privilege and rights which white males had previously claimed, to their obvious detriment.
I recognize the loss of privilage but not rights. Affirmative Action was a logical step to enforce equality and correct past injustice. It seems to have worked in my eyes and the eye the others. Today AA has outlived its need and the debate is now how to phase it out.
"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality." - George Washington
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" Benjamin Franklin(1706 - 1790)
The American people don't always get it right but they learn from their mistakes. Prohibition and welfare reform are great examples. This is a government of the People, by the People, and for the People. Not wolves.
"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -- Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons, Nov. 1947
One more example is the AWB which will expire in 5 legislative days. Now I can have a semiautomatic with a bayonet holder and a flash suppressor. I'm gonna be a well armed sheep even though there are more laws and more people since 10 years ago.
Again, you cite exceptions to the general tendency of legislation or regulation, once enacted, staying on the books forever, with the recent exception of laws having sunset provisions. Both Alcohol Prohibition and welfare had produced absolute disasters in organized crime and minority families, respectively. Now the "War on Drugs" feeds some old and some new criminal organizations. Somehow, I get the impression that you never lived in a city large enough to have a major league team. Please check out the links.
The war on guns: Joel Miller explains how drug cops are killing 2nd Amendment
Welfare reform was not permanent. "Campaign Politics Seen as Slowing Welfare Law"
Try reading "When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country"
If Congress renews the "Assault Weapons Ban", I promise not to tell you, "I told you so", when Bush signs it.
Countries almost never fall from exterior threats, but almost always do from interior ones. We're busy with non-existent a$$wipe threats like Afghanistan and Iraq, but Bush and the US administration are busy trying to destroy this country by leaving the doors open to whomever wants to walk across the border.
When Congress lets the AWB sunset I promise to remind you you are a dumb sonuvabitch.
Welfare used to be a right. It is no longer a right. You got exceptions for constitutional ammendments, war, and sunseted legeslation...none of which include welfare reform...but what the hell. Your theory has been shot full of holes and you defend it to the end. I don't know what else to say to you except it takes a real tool to move the goal posts everytime you are proven wrong. I'm tempted to look up your past posts. I suspect you pissed on Dubya before Saddam was caught and then posted it doesn't matter. Whatever major loser.
Really tell that to Yugoslavia, and Iraq, and Vietnam, and Afghanistan, and blah blah blah blah balh. Do you even think about the crap you post?
We're busy with non-existent a$$wipe threats like Afghanistan
I have no response...I just want PaleoConservatives to see the morons they are in bed with. I hope you get your head cut off.
And of course that isn't happening with unlimited immigration --- massive migration just leads to more instability --- but those employers of illegals just want the cheapest possible labor and it is to their advantage to have Mexico remain corrupt and poverty stricken. Open borders is making things worse in Mexico -- and I'm sure you noticed their July elections showed some big losses for Fox's PAN party and a big turn to the left.
The only way Mexico is going to improve would be for unlimited immigration to the USA to stop being the solution for every problem --- and they would have to change that corrupt government and the culture of corruption and machismo. Otherwise Mexico only remains a producer of desperately poor people.
Bushbot, you can't recognize the zebra analogy and your back with the ad hominems. Did you forget to take your meds today?
As far as Bush, about the only way Bush acted in a conservative manner is as commander in chief, making at most a few recess appointments of circuit judges, signing tax cuts and the ban on partial birth abortion. Otherwise, he's been the proverbial RINO expanding government.
I guess taxcuts, successful wars against our enemies, abortion restrictions, expanding the 2nd ammendment mean nothing to little dogs who nip at the heels of giants. Have a life, parsite.
You're repeating yourself. Yes hiring an illegal carries a fine but no jailtime...just like not wearing a seatbelt.
Now you are informed yet no wiser. Why do I bother?
Tell it to Tyson.
Penalties for those dealing with illegal aliens:
Penalties -- The basic statutory maximum penalty for violating 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(i) and (v)(I) (alien smuggling and conspiracy) is a fine under title 18, imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both. With regard to violations of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(ii)-(iv) and (v)(ii), domestic transportation, harboring, encouraging/inducing, or aiding/abetting, the basic statutory maximum term of imprisonment is 5 years, unless the offense was committed for commercial advantage or private financial gain, in which case the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years. In addition, significant enhanced penalties are provided for in violations of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1) involving serious bodily injury or placing life in jeopardy. Moreover, if the violation results in the death of any person, the defendant may be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years. The basic penalty for a violation of subsection 1324(a)(2) is a fine under title 18, imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(A). Enhanced penalties are provided for violations involving bringing in criminal aliens, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(i), offenses done for commercial advantage or private financial gain, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(ii), and violations where the alien is not presented to an immigration officer immediately upon arrival, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(iii). A mandatory minimum three year term of imprisonment applies to first or second violations of § 1324(a)(2)(B)(i) or (B)(ii). Further enhanced punishment is provided for third or subsequent offenses.
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