by 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.
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.
