[Infowarrior] - Are You a Citizen? Prove It

[Richard Forno]

Are You a Citizen? Prove It

NationalBy Kavan Peterson - 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.

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/20090/
 
Stateline.org - infoZine - 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.

voter id 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.

immigrants in the US 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 at stateline.org . Selected reader
feedback will be posted in the Letters to the editor section.

Source: Contact Kavan Peterson at kpeterson at stateline.org - © 2006
stateline.org