Collision course on driver’s licenses

Supreme Court Justice Karen Smith last week ordered the New York DMV to stop denying driver’s licenses to applicants on the basis of doubtful or unclear immigration status.
The decision cut across a DMV policy, which came into effect post-Sept. 11, to match the social security numbers presented by applicants with the records of the Social Security Administration in Washington.
In rendering her decision, Judge Smith granted an injunction that is rooted in a lawsuit taken last year by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The PRLDEF suit charged that immigrants, both legal and undocumented, were being wrongly denied licenses by the DMV.
One case cited in the action was that of an unnamed undocumented Irish immigrant who needed a car in order to drive his daughter, who is prone to seizures, for medical care.
The court decision would appear to place at least a temporary stay on the DMV’s plans to suspend licenses for as many as 250,000 people in New York State, a number of them Irish.
Judge Smith stated that the DMV could not enforce immigration law on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security.
“It simply lacks the expertise and, more importantly, it has not been empowered by the state legislature to carry out that function,” Smith said in her opinion.
The DMV is planning to appeal. Commissioner Ray Martinez said that the rules governing the issuing of driver’s licenses in New York State were the most secure in the U.S.
The DMV, he indicated, would continue to enforce the law so that the situation would stay that way.
It was with this pledge in mind that one Irish immigration advocate warned this week that the situation surrounding license applications in New York was still far from clear, despite the court decision.
“If anything the situation is even more challenging,” said Siobhan Dennehy of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center in Queens. “I would not encourage anybody to turn up at the DMV and ask for a license,” Dennehy said.
There were questions, she said, of how the DMV would implement its procedures as the appeal proceeded in the courts.
“DMV staff might not know how to precisely implement this decision,” said Dennehy.
Dennehy’s concerns have been raised higher still by the passage through Congress last week of the Real ID Act.
The act was attached to an $82 billion military supplementary spending bill.
The Real ID measure is being given three years to take full effect but its existence is already raising tensions between federal legislators and individual states.
Eleven states do not require proof of legal immigrant status in order to obtain a license.
Tennessee and Utah have a two-tier system in which non-permanent residents can secure licenses that are for driving only and are not considered the kind of full legal identification that is required to, for example, board a passenger aircraft.
EIIC’s Dennehy said that passage of the Real ID Act and continued uncertainty in states such as New York were causing consternation for many people
“People are having to put their lives on hold,” Dennehy said.
She said that eventual passage of the just unveiled Kennedy/McCain immigration reform bill would dramatically change this situation.
“A lot of issues would simply disappear. But in the meantime there are no clear cut answers.”