New York Times
By Jack Healy and Julie Turkewitz
February 11, 2015
His
driver’s license is an economic lifeline, said Felipe Castro, an
undocumented immigrant from Mexico who commutes 40 miles each morning to
his construction job in Northern
Colorado. Or it was, until it expired last week.
He
needed to renew it under a state program that was created almost two
years ago — one of several across the country granting licenses to
noncitizens. But with Republicans
now in control of the Senate, the legislature’s joint budget committee
has largely stripped the program of the money it needs to operate,
angering many in Colorado’s fast-growing Latino community and upending
life for thousands of undocumented immigrants like
Mr. Castro, who has lived in the United States for more than a decade.
The waiting period for licenses, never short, now sprawls until March
2016.
“I
cannot renew it,” Mr. Castro, 51, said. “We suffer. When we have one
crash, we are ready to lose everything. We go to jail, we suffer the
deportation.”
Since
the Colorado program began in August 2014, the state has issued 7,934
driver’s licenses and 1,655 state identification cards, according to the
Division of Motor
Vehicles. In states where licenses for immigrants who are in the
country illegally have been approved — there are 10 in all, plus the
District of Columbia and Puerto Rico — demand has been high: California,
which started its program at the beginning of 2015,
said that more than 366,000 applicants had visited motor vehicles
offices as of Feb. 3.
Now
there is pushback, and not only in Colorado. In New Mexico, one of the
first states to issue licenses to illegal immigrants, conservative
lawmakers — with the backing
of Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and the first Latina to hold the
post — have tried repeatedly to repeal the law enacted in 2003. The
latest repeal attempt could go to a floor vote this week in the House of
Representatives, which is Republican-controlled
for the first time in 60 years; however, the bill will face a fight in
the state’s Democrat-controlled Senate. And here in Colorado, Democrats
plan to fight to restore the funding that the Republicans have erased.
The
state-by-state battles over licenses have unfolded in the absence of
broad federal legislation over how to handle the millions of people
living in the country illegally.
Supporters of noncitizen licenses — who include law enforcement
officials — say that safety is the fundamental issue, since the
licensing process makes drivers better educated about the rules of the
road, more likely to have insurance, and less likely to flee
an accident. Opponents, who include some Democrats, say the program
amounts to amnesty.
In
Arizona, after legislators attempted to deny licenses to certain
immigrants, a federal judge ruled last month that the state must issue
licenses to so-called Dreamers,
people who were brought to the United States illegally as children, and
were spared from deportation by President Obama in 2012.
“I
don’t feel there should be any enabling for those people at all,” said
Stan Weekes, a former director of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration
Reform. “There’s a way
you go about immigrating, and then there’s the other way. I’m sorry, I
just don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who are unwilling to go by
the rules.”
While
the Colorado Republicans do not have the votes to repeal the license
program, they were able to gut its funding in a joint budget committee
vote last month. They
rejected a request from the D.M.V. to use about $166,000 in fees it
collected from applicants to continue paying for the five offices and
several staff members who run the program for thousands of immigrant
applicants. The measure will stand, unless lawmakers
amend the budget, which could happen: on Thursday, Jessie Ulibarri, a
Democratic senator, plans to introduce a measure that would restore
funding to the program.
State
Senator Kevin Grantham, a Republican member of the budget committee who
voted against releasing additional funds for the license program, said
he worried about the
message that the program sends. “We are endorsing them being here
illegally by giving them a state-sanctioned license, which is a
privilege,” he said. “That is not what our resources should be used
for.”
Tanya
Broder, a senior attorney for the National Immigration Law Center,
which favors licenses for noncitizens, said it was not surprising to see
resistance even in states
where licenses have been issued. “There will be many steps forward, and
a step or two back,” she said.
What
is surprising is that it happened in Colorado, a swing state where
Latinos make up about 14 percent of eligible voters and are starting to
be elected in larger numbers
to the State Legislature.
There
are about 180,000 undocumented immigrants in Colorado, according to an
estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center based on 2012 data. And immigrant
rights advocates say
they have been deluged with calls since the money for licenses was cut.
“Everyone
has been asking, ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ ” said Estrella Ruiz,
who has been helping many immigrants around Grand Junction, Colo.,
schedule their Division
of Motor Vehicles appointments and get their documents in order. “The
political game that they’re playing, it’s upsetting. Why take away
programs that are helping the community?”
Four
of the five D.M.V. offices handling noncitizen appointments for
identification cards and driver’s licenses were cut back, leaving one in
Denver. It can handle about
30 people a day; immigrant rights groups say that thousands are waiting
for licenses.
“There’s a huge backlog, and unless the funding is restored there’s no forward motion,” Mr. Ulibarri said.
In
New Mexico, opponents of the driver’s license law have said that it has
made the state a hub for criminals who help out-of-state immigrants
obtain bogus licenses by
providing them with false documents. The state has repeatedly convicted
people in such schemes; in one case involving a former public notary,
the scam brought in an estimated $30,000 a month.
“Providing
driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants has turned New Mexico into a
magnet for criminal activity, leading to elaborate fraud rings and human
trafficking,”
Representative Paul Pacheco, who introduced the current bill to repeal
licenses, said in a statement. “It is a dangerous practice that needs to
be repealed once and for all.”
Even
before the funding cuts in Colorado, immigrant rights groups complained
about disorganization and long waits for licenses, and said the five
offices could not keep
up with the demand.
Jeanette
Vizguerra said her appointment had been pushed back to November from
April. Ms. Vizguerra, who came illegally to Colorado from Mexico City in
1997 and has been
fighting for years to avoid deportation, has a learner’s permit, but
said she needed a license to get to work cleaning houses and bring her
three American-born children to school.
“It’s
ridiculous and unjustifiable,” she said of the licensing change in
Colorado. “It’s a way to punish the community. There’s no other way to
say it.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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