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No Number, No Ride
Kate Stone Lombardi, New York Times
September 12, 2004
Hector Maldonado received a letter recently that threatens to turn his life upside down. The letter, from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, informed Mr. Maldonado that because the agency was unable to verify his Social Security number, his driver's license - which he has had for 19 years - would be suspended. He was given 15 days to provide the correct documentation.
For Mr. Maldonado, and for tens of thousands like him, producing a Social Security card is not an option. He has lived in this country since 1985, and though he applied years ago for legal status, his documents are still being processed. In the meantime he has been paying taxes through an employer identification card.
But now Mr. Maldonado, a White Plains resident and the father of two children, 7 and 15, wonders how long he will be employed at all. He works as a driver for a construction company in Armonk. Mr. Maldonado told his boss about his dilemma, but his employer, while sympathetic, told him that there was little he could do.
"It's very frustrating," Mr. Maldonado, 45, said in an interview conducted with an interpreter. "Especially when you have had a driver's license for so many years, and you have worked so many years and abided by the law for so many years. I don't know what I'm going to do - a person has to work."
Since January, the Motor Vehicles Department has sent out roughly 500,000 letters threatening to suspend the licenses of drivers whose Social Security numbers do not match federal records. Joe Picchi, a spokesman for the department, said that the review is continuing, and he expects between 250,000 and 300,000 drivers to lose their licenses. So far more than 600 licenses have been suspended.
The move has hit the immigrant community hard, particularly in the suburbs, where public transportation is limited, and many depend on driving for their jobs as house cleaners, nannies, landscapers and construction and restaurant workers. Advocates for immigrants say they have been flooded with inquiries.
"We've been inundated with calls from people who are absolutely frantic," said Margie McHugh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella organization for more than 150 groups that work with immigrants in the New York region. "This is having a devastating impact on the immigrant communities all around the state, but especially in the rural and suburban communities where immigrants depend on having a driver's license for their very livelihoods."
State officials say the move is not intended to crack down on illegal immigrants. Mr. Picchi said that the department is acting now because the technology has become available to enforce a law that has been on the books since 1995, which requires the state to collect the Social Security numbers of all driver's license applicants. (Mr. Maldonado got his license before the requirement was put in effect.)
IN a hearing held in Manhattan last month by the State Assembly's Transportation Committee, Raymond P. Martinez, the state motor vehicles commissioner, portrayed the crackdown as a means of screening terrorists.
Mr. Martinez testified that 18 out of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, held valid driver's licenses, which allowed them to board airplanes. He noted that in New York, as in most states, a driver's license is often a resident's only government-issued photo identification.
"While a driver's license has historically been a document indicating that an individual is qualified to operate a motor vehicle, the driver's license has become the 'defacto' national identification card, providing the ability to open bank accounts and obtain credit, rent apartments and gain access to transportation services," Mr. Martinez said at the hearing.
Moreover, Mr. Martinez said that the use of fraudulent Social Security numbers has allowed parents to avoid their child support obligations, criminals to engage in identify theft and bank, credit and insurance fraud, as well as people whose licenses have been revoked for drunk-driving convictions to obtain new licenses illegally.
New York is one of about a dozen states that allow illegal immigrants to get a driver's license. When the state began requiring Social Security numbers in the mid-1990's, (which was done in an effort to improve child support), state regulations permitted an alternative. In lieu of a Social Security card, applicants may present a letter from the Social Security Administration confirming that he or she is not eligible for a number.
But when Anibal Martinez, 36, of Mount Kisco (no relation to the commissioner), presented such documentation from the Social Security Administration, as well as his employment authorization card with his taxpayer identification to the Motor Vehicles Department in Peekskill, he was still refused a license. The reason, he was told, was that he had only five months left before his employment card expired. The department requires that immigration documents must be valid for at least six months after the application. The employment cards are renewed annually, and while Mr. Martinez has already applied for renewal, it has not yet been issued.
Mr. Martinez's recent denial of a driver's license caused him to lose a job he had worked long and hard to get. He had been hired by the Westchester Hispanic Coalition to be the coordinator at a job site in Port Chester.
Graciela Heymann, executive director of the coalition, which is based in White Plains, said that Mr. Martinez was perfect for the job.
"His experience was very good, because he came here as a day laborer, so he knows what it's like to be on the street waiting for work, what it's like to do the kind of work that they do," Ms. Heymann said. "He's also bilingual and he has that interest in community and in organizing. Plus he happens to be very personable so he can deal with a lot of situations that come up. It's very difficult to find someone who can fit all those characteristics."
As part of his training, Mr. Martinez attended a regional conference of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, attending workshops and meetings in New Jersey and Manhattan. He visited the Port Chester site (he was driven by another staff member) to familiarize himself with the position. All that remained was procuring the driver's license. When he was unable to do so, Ms. Heymann had to fill the job with someone else. As an advocate for immigrants, the irony was not lost on her, but Ms. Heymann also needed
someone who could legally drive. "It's embarrassing, being advocates, that we also have to do this to our own people," she said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Martinez is working as a painter. He pays someone $20 an hour to drive him to his current job in Pound Ridge.
"America is a hard place to live without a license," he said.
For those who do not have employment authorization cards or any other legal documentation, the letters from the department have been even more frightening. When Carlos, 21, of Mount Kisco, received one, he promptly canceled his car insurance and stopped driving. Carlos did not appear at the agency in person for the same reason he did not want his last name in the newspaper: fear of deportation.
"I was afraid they were looking for me," he said, with the help of a translator. "I don't want to get in trouble."
Carlos came to this country when he was 15, he said, for one reason - "para trabajar" - to work. Until he became too worried to drive, he held a job as a busboy. Now he gets a ride from his new boss to a landscaping job, which is only seasonal.
"The busboy job was better," Carlos said. "I could work all the time. Now I work only in the summer."
Immigrant advocates have not only heard from frightened immigrants, but also from their employers.
"The employers are in as big a panic as the employees are," said Robin Bikkal, president of El Centro Hispano in White Plains and chairwoman of the Westchester Hispanic Advisory Board. "Many of their employees have been here for extended periods of time and have secured positions of importance.
They're foremen, supervisors, and they're heavily relied upon by their employers. This is pretty disastrous to their business."
Deborah Notkin, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she, too, has gotten frantic calls from employers. Ms. Notkin testified at the State Assembly hearing about a working mother in Westchester who is desperate because her Uruguayan baby sitter, who has lived in New York since she was 12, will lose her license because she lacks a Social Security number and a valid visa.
"It's starting to make everyone suffer, the immigrants and other people in Westchester, because these people are serving a function," Ms. Notkin said in a later interview. "There are not enough U.S. workers who want to be nannies to go around; there are not enough U.S. workers who are willing to work for these landscapers and restaurants. These people are in Westchester because we have work for them."
Local churches have also addressed the issue. Last June, several hundred immigrants attended a Mass at the Church of St. Vito in Mamaroneck, where they prayed that the state would reconsider its plans. The Rev. James Healy, the pastor of St. Vito's, said that the Roman Catholic vicariate of central Westchester, a jurisdiction within the New York Archdiocese, has held several meetings on this subject and had written a letter to Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the New York archbishop, expressing their concern. Father Healy said that the crackdown puts immigrants in his parish in a terrible position.
"They want to comply; they would do anything to be legal or documented, but they can't," he said. "They've been here for years but they're being forced to become criminals."
Many are concerned that immigrants who are desperate to work will simply drive without a valid license, not only putting themselves at risk for arrest, but also jeopardizing others by driving without insurance.
"The D.M.V. is saying it's going to make us safer and more secure, but it's hard to imagine how we're going to be more secure when we are sending several hundred thousand people into the underground," said Ms. McHugh of the Immigration Coalition.
Mr. Picchi, of motor vehicles, said that the agency would work to get such illegal drivers off the road.
Margaret Stock, an associate professor of national security at the United States Military Academy, who is writing a paper on the driver's license issue, said that the new measure raises other, unanticipated security risks.
She noted that the collective state motor vehicle data bases makeup the largest law enforcement data base in the country, and that keeping people out of it was ill advised.
"You hear a lot of people who claim to be conservative that say illegal aliens shouldn't have licenses, but what they are really saying is only American citizens should be in this database," Ms. Stock said. "We want to encourage people to be in it. We do want to stamp out fraud, but the way you get accurate information in a database is that you don't require unrealistic data."
Ms. Stock, who is also a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, said that having a valid Social Security card has little to do with a person's legal status, because immigration law is so complex.
"You can be legal one day and illegal the next, and there's no way the D.M.V. can keep track of this," she said.
Much of the problem, critics of the policy argue, is that the backlogs for immigrants to become legal takes years, making department requirements impossible for many to meet.
"What the D.M.V. has decided to essentially do is to link longer-term lawful immigration status to one's ability to get a license," Ms. McHugh said.
"Meanwhile we have a policy train wreck at the state and federal level. We have a lot of immigrants who have been here almost 20 years now, and we haven't created a pipeline for them to legally enter."
In his testimony, Mr. Martinez, the commissioner, said that the agency was not in the immigration business and was simply trying to crack down on fraud. "We have no intention of taking action against those individuals beyond bringing them into compliance with our licensing standards," Mr. Martinez said. "We are not an immigration agency, and we are not reporting them to the federal government." He added that the agency would prosecute anyone who continued to provide false documents.
Last month, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a class-action suit charging that the department had overstepped its authority y appropriating federal responsibility for immigration, overriding state law on issuing licenses and ignoring due process.
Mr. Picchi said the department does not comment on pending litigation. But in a prepared statement, Mr. Martinez said that the agency's authority comes from vehicle and traffic laws, which specify that an applicant for a driver's license "shall furnish such proof of identity, age and fitness as may be required by the commissioner."
But much of the legal nuance is lost on those most affected. Mr. Maldonado said he was more frightened than angry about the crackdown.
"I'm keeping my hopes up, but one doesn't have a choice," he said. "One has to work."
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