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Monday, January 08, 2007
Are you a citizen? Prove it
By Kavan Peterson, Stateline.org Staff Writer
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 | State of the States 2007 is off the presses. Stateline.org’s annual publication highlighting significant state policy developments and trends can be ordered here. | When Colorado state Sen. Andy McElhany (R) championed adoption of the strictest identification requirements in the country, his aim was to keep illegal immigrants off state welfare rolls. He didn’t anticipate making it harder for his 15-year-old daughter to get a learner’s permit.
But that’s what happened when his wife and daughter showed up at the Division of Motor Vehicles office in Colorado Springs in September. They brought the teen’s passport, only to discover DMV had changed the rules and a passport was no longer a sufficient form of identification.
“There's no reason to believe a 15-year-old girl is going to be running around with a fake passport just to get a driver's permit," a chagrined McElhany said.
Going to the DMV never has been a walk in the park, but it’s likely to get even more difficult as states across the country begin to comply with stringent federal identification rules required by the 2005 Real ID Act.
Americans by the tens of millions will have to dig out documents such as Social Security cards and birth certificates, or go to the expense of getting new ones, to renew their driver’s licenses. Fears of terrorism and the uproar over illegal immigration are behind the new rules. The Real ID Act is a response to the fact that four of the 19 foreign hijackers on Sept. 11 had obtained valid U.S. driver’s licenses.
Worries about voter fraud and the chance that illegal immigrants are taking advantage of taxpayer-funded public services also have prompted a surge in stiffer identification requirements – from voting booths to Medicaid applications. To weed out the few, all Americans growingly need a paper trail to qualify for some of the perks of citizenship.
Colorado ran into legal trouble within months of enacting the nation's toughest ID standards. New rules requiring proof of both identity and legal U.S. residency left some unable to get a driver’s license or state ID card. Without ID, they also were left without access to everything from welfare to winter heating assistance to fishing licenses.
A state judge in December temporarily froze the new rules, moving the ID dispute into the courts. Colorado’s new law denying benefits to those without proper ID – a bipartisan measure heavily pushed by outgoing Gov. Bill Owens (R) -- is the most far-reaching of a record 78 immigration-related laws enacted in 33 states in 2006. They ranged from crackdowns on employers and human traffickers to restrictions on social services and in-state college tuition.
About 100,000 of Colorado’s 4.3 million residents get state aid. Some 3,000 immigrants were flagged as possible illegal aliens in the first three months under the state's new ID requirements, and DMV offices detected 150 fake birth certificates, Colorado Revenue Director M. Michael Cooke told Stateline.org.
Only 200 people sought temporary waivers from the requirement on grounds of illness or disability or because they lacked the required documents, Cooke said. That shows the new identification requirements "haven't been overly burdensome," she said.
But advocates for the poor said caseworkers are overwhelmed with families needing social services that need help tracking down certified birth certificates. The Denver Department of Human Services, which helps poor people order and pay for duplicates of their birth certificates, had about twice as many folks seeking help a month after the law took effect and expects a doubling again by 2007, according to spokeswoman Sue Cobb.
Three people turned away at Colorado’s DMV filed a class-action lawsuit and won a temporary suspension of the ID rules in December. The judge found the document requirements for a driver’s license imposed a hardship and may have been adopted without proper public comment. The DMV, enforcing a new state law, required applicants to provide two from a list of 19 acceptable documents.
One of the plaintiffs, 70-year-old Leon Hill, became homeless after he was robbed of his identification and money shortly after moving to Denver in 2006. He was denied a new ID when he could produce only his original California birth certificate and a photocopy his driving record. Diana Galliano, 42, was denied a driver’s license when she presented her valid New York driver’s license and U.S. passport. Michael Sullivan, 49, had a birth certificate and photocopies of his stolen New Mexico driver’s license and stolen Social Security card.
“In Colorado they’ve made it so hard to get an ID, it’s truly a Catch-22 where citizens can’t get an identity card unless they’ve already got one,” said Denver attorney Tim MacDonald, whose law firm is working pro bono on the case with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
Despite his daughter's run-in at the DMV, McElhany, the state senator, said he still strongly supports new statutes to crack down on illegal aliens. A national uproar over illegal immigration came to a head last year in Colorado, a non-border state whose immigrant population has nearly quadrupled since 1990 to about 370,000, with half of those undocumented, according to an estimate by the nonprofit Pew Hispanic Center. Fed up by the federal government’s inability to stop illegal border crossings, the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed 12 immigration bills in a heated special session in July.
Still, even lawmakers who voted for the new ID bill said they will consider tweaking it when the Legislature goes back into session in January. “We need to sit down and make sure that we're not blocking services to those entitled to them and that we're protecting our freedom to live under an efficient and effective government," Colorado state Rep. Bernie Buescher (D) told Stateline.org.
Most of the 245 million driver’s license holders in the United States aren’t aware yet that the Real ID Act’s document dragnet for terrorists, illegal aliens and imposters is about to entangle them, too. But state officials are aware and are set to bang on the doors of the new Congress demanding more time and money to comply.
States are throwing up their hands at the requirement that each driver come in person to motor vehicle offices to renew driver’s licenses starting in May 2008. Everyone will have to bring a set of documents proving his identity and residency, although the exact documents haven't been spelled out yet. The papers will have to be verified by government databases that do not yet exist. States also have to create new IDs with anti-counterfeiting security features.
By curbing renewals by mail and online, Real ID will force DMVs to handle 686 million customer transactions face-to-face over five years, instead of the 295 million they would handle anyway, a study by the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators concluded. DMV staffs would have to be doubled at a cost of more than $11 billion to take on the extra duties, state officials estimate.
"When lines at the DMV are snaking around the block and the cost of a driver's license has doubled or tripled, the politicians holding the bag won't stay in office very long," predicts Lee Tien, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer advocacy group that opposes national ID standards. It worries that large government databases of personal information are a threat to privacy and could expose consumers to identify theft and fraud.
Exercising the basic right of citizenship – the right to vote -- also is becoming more of a hassle.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) initially was turned away from a polling place on Election Day 2006 when he could not produce his voter registration card and his driver’s license showed his old Columbia address instead of the governor’s mansion. An election official stood her ground while television crews recorded the scene. Sanford voted later with a newly issued replacement card.
South Carolina is one of 26 states that now require voters to present some form of identification when they show up at the polls. Georgia and Missouri passed laws last year to require government-issued photo IDs at the polls, but courts struck them down. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the state’s new voter ID requirements “impermissibly infringe on core voting rights guaranteed by the Missouri Constitution.” Georgia’s law, which required residents without a state photo ID to purchase a $20 digital identification card to vote, was struck down in federal court. The judge likened the law to an illegal Jim Crow-era poll tax.
Indiana’s voter ID law, considered to be the toughest, so far has survived a legal challenge. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote upheld the law Jan. 4. It requires a government-issued photo ID with the voter’s address and signature. Those without proper identification can cast provisional ballots that are counted only if the voter provides proof of identity within 48 hours.
In Arizona, stringent ID requirements approved at the ballot box in 2004 were initially struck down by a federal court. But they were reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court one week before the 2006 election. Arizona voters needed either a government-issued photo ID or two documents showing name and address, such as a utility bill or tax return.
The federal government also is starting to require proof of citizenship for benefits. For the first time, all 46 million poor, elderly and disabled people in state-run Medicaid health insurance programs must produce documents proving they were born in the United States or are here legally. Four states – Georgia, Montana, New Hampshire and New York – already required Medicaid applicants to prove their citizenship. The ID rules, which went into effect last July, are targeted at illegal immigrants, who aren’t eligible for Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the change will save at least $735 million in taxpayer dollars over the next decade.
But the new law creates problems for Americans without birth certificates or those who can’t find them easily. Even parents with a child's birth certificate in hand – including for babies born in U.S. hospitals, making them automatic citizens – must provide separate documentation proving legal state residency, such as school or health records. Advocates and state Medicaid administrators worry the nuisance and cost of securing the right documents could discourage parents from getting their child vaccinated or treated.
The elderly and mentally ill in nursing homes or state institutions are especially liable to slip through the cracks, advocates warn. It's common for senior citizens to let driver's licenses lapse or for Alzheimer's patients to lose track of personal identification, noted Elizabeth Priaulx of the National Disability Rights Network.
The preceding article is the fourth to be excerpted from State of the States 2007, Stateline.org’s annual report on significant state policy developments and trends. (The online article was updated to include a Jan. 4 court ruling on Indiana's voter ID law.) The 48-page State of the States publication is now available. Our limited supply of print copies is already exhausted, but to order an electronic version, click here.
Send your comments on this story to letters@stateline.org. Selected reader feedback will be posted in the Letters to the editor section.
Contact Kavan Peterson at kpeterson@stateline.org.
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Most Recent Comments
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Illigal Alians
By Linda Perez on Jun 22, 2007 2:08:08 PM
YOU KNOW I HAVE A FEW WORDS TO SAY ABOUT ILLIAGL ALIANS I THINK THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE HERE IN THE STATES.WHY YOU ASK BECAUSE THEY WILL DO MANUAL LABOR THAT US AMERICANS WONT TOUCH.THEY ARE VERY HARD WORKERS, I KNOW BECAUSE I HAVE A LOT OF HISPANIC FRIENDS AND I KNOW HOW HARD THEY WORK SO I THINK PEOPLE SHOULD DO ALOT OF THINKING BEFORE KNOCKING THEM AND WANTING TO SEND THEM BACK SO EAGERLY
Report as Offensive
2005 Census Cites Erroneous Numbers of Illegals
By Illegal Aliens Be Deported on Apr 28, 2007 12:20:00 AM
Now I see where that grossly overused "11 million illegals" number comes from. It comes from the PEW Hispanic Research Center. Hellooooo!!! They purposefully underrepresented the number of illegals during the 2005 census! Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse! In Oregon alone, the contender for the last Governor's election (Saxton, 2006) ran television and radio ads declaring that there were AT LEAST 250,000 illegal immigrants in the state of Oregon! He said that number represented "the 2nd largest city in the state of Oregon"! But the 2005 census reports Oregon as only having had between 75,000 and 150,000! Unless more than 100,000 came over or under our border fences in 2006 alone, there is one heck of a discrepancy in those numbers! Using that margin of error, that would mean that the number in the U.S. is closer to 25,000,000! Of course, I've heard that number mentioned as well - just not by the media or the government!
Illegals, GO BACK HOME!
Report as Offensive
immigration & identity proff
By Cecily Hazelrigg-Hernandez on Apr 26, 2007 3:03:17 PM
If the borders had been sealed, your ancestors couldn't have come in. That is absolutely an unrealistic response to a situation that the US has plenty of responsibility in creating.
Report as Offensive
national id nightmare
By curtis batteiger on Feb 15, 2007 2:57:54 PM
The whole matter rest to pacify national security, and money interest, we talk of how badly illegal immigration is out of hand, and we pass acts as the national ID with RFID, with more costs and nightmare problems, but the whole matter this will not protect us anymore than we are now, placing more restrictive measures just threatens your personal liberties and privacy,
While all this is going on as a requirement, Bush continues to cater to corporate interests, and as the SPP, as the integration of the 3 countries, making the borders even more lax.
What is wrong with this picture? It sounds more like money talking here, trying to pacify security, while corporations encourage illegal entry as hiring for cheap labor.
All this will do is accomplish nothing more but more restrictions on your freedom and rights and privacy.
Report as Offensive
Prove your a citizen
By lisa yousef on Feb 5, 2007 10:30:26 AM
Why should we have to provide documents to get a license, since the governement already has all of our personal information?
From the day we apply for a license (driver's, marriage, etc), they ask for legal documents (birth cert., ss #, anything and everything that you've got). When you get a passport, they get certified birth certificates and for naturalized citizens, they get the original document showing the INS #/photo and it's mailed back to the recipient with the passport.
SS# are automatically applied for by the hospital when a child is born.
So why is the government being so tight-(expletive) about this. They know more about us that we know about ourselves. Whether you know it or not, they are reading your mail, e-mail, txt msgs, im's, listening to your phone calls. So there are not secrets.
Big Brother is the US Government.
What more can I say?
Report as Offensive
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 | Stateline.org has put together a list of state public policy resources organized by issue. Here, you will find useful links to essential information from government, academia, and think tanks. If you have a link to add, please email us.
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Powered by
By Linda Perez on Jun 22, 2007 2:08:08 PM
YOU KNOW I HAVE A FEW WORDS TO SAY ABOUT ILLIAGL ALIANS I THINK THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE HERE IN THE STATES.WHY YOU ASK BECAUSE THEY WILL DO MANUAL LABOR THAT US AMERICANS WONT TOUCH.THEY ARE VERY HARD WORKERS, I KNOW BECAUSE I HAVE A LOT OF HISPANIC FRIENDS AND I KNOW HOW HARD THEY WORK SO I THINK PEOPLE SHOULD DO ALOT OF THINKING BEFORE KNOCKING THEM AND WANTING TO SEND THEM BACK SO EAGERLY
Report as Offensive
2005 Census Cites Erroneous Numbers of Illegals
By Illegal Aliens Be Deported on Apr 28, 2007 12:20:00 AM
Now I see where that grossly overused "11 million illegals" number comes from. It comes from the PEW Hispanic Research Center. Hellooooo!!! They purposefully underrepresented the number of illegals during the 2005 census! Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse! In Oregon alone, the contender for the last Governor's election (Saxton, 2006) ran television and radio ads declaring that there were AT LEAST 250,000 illegal immigrants in the state of Oregon! He said that number represented "the 2nd largest city in the state of Oregon"! But the 2005 census reports Oregon as only having had between 75,000 and 150,000! Unless more than 100,000 came over or under our border fences in 2006 alone, there is one heck of a discrepancy in those numbers! Using that margin of error, that would mean that the number in the U.S. is closer to 25,000,000! Of course, I've heard that number mentioned as well - just not by the media or the government!
Illegals, GO BACK HOME!
Report as Offensive
immigration & identity proff
By Cecily Hazelrigg-Hernandez on Apr 26, 2007 3:03:17 PM
If the borders had been sealed, your ancestors couldn't have come in. That is absolutely an unrealistic response to a situation that the US has plenty of responsibility in creating.
Report as Offensive
national id nightmare
By curtis batteiger on Feb 15, 2007 2:57:54 PM
The whole matter rest to pacify national security, and money interest, we talk of how badly illegal immigration is out of hand, and we pass acts as the national ID with RFID, with more costs and nightmare problems, but the whole matter this will not protect us anymore than we are now, placing more restrictive measures just threatens your personal liberties and privacy,
While all this is going on as a requirement, Bush continues to cater to corporate interests, and as the SPP, as the integration of the 3 countries, making the borders even more lax.
What is wrong with this picture? It sounds more like money talking here, trying to pacify security, while corporations encourage illegal entry as hiring for cheap labor.
All this will do is accomplish nothing more but more restrictions on your freedom and rights and privacy.
Report as Offensive
Prove your a citizen
By lisa yousef on Feb 5, 2007 10:30:26 AM
Why should we have to provide documents to get a license, since the governement already has all of our personal information?
From the day we apply for a license (driver's, marriage, etc), they ask for legal documents (birth cert., ss #, anything and everything that you've got). When you get a passport, they get certified birth certificates and for naturalized citizens, they get the original document showing the INS #/photo and it's mailed back to the recipient with the passport.
SS# are automatically applied for by the hospital when a child is born.
So why is the government being so tight-(expletive) about this. They know more about us that we know about ourselves. Whether you know it or not, they are reading your mail, e-mail, txt msgs, im's, listening to your phone calls. So there are not secrets.
Big Brother is the US Government.
What more can I say?
Report as Offensive
By Alan Whitaker on Jan 21, 2007 8:41:29 AM
We wouldn't have to do this if our sorry federal government had been doing their jobs protecting us from illegal aliens.
If the borders were sealed, we wouldn't be worrying about it.
Report as Offensive