The North Carolina legislature spent the evening of July 26 beating a dead horse. Lawmakers finally approved legislation to eliminate the use of the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a proof of identification to obtain a driver’s license. In the future, North Carolina residents will have to provide a Social Security number in order to get the document.
According to former state law, the ITIN was a document that provided options to undocumented immigrants and allowed them to get a license to operate a vehicle.
But the process to kill the ITIN began in the winter of 2003. That season was horrible for Governor Mike Easley, who was fighting for his re-election. Six GOP contenders for his position used public forums to attack him for North Carolina’s bad reputation as one of the easiest places in this part of the country to obtain a driver’s license.
Feeling like a piñata, Easley ordered changes in the ITIN regulations, and on New Year’s Day 2004, Latino immigrants were awakened with the news that Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner George Tatum planned to enact Operation Stop Fraud. Tens of thousands of Hispanics flooded the 127 statewide DMV locations. Defying freezing temperatures during January, Hispanics camped before sunrise in front of the DMV offices in order to obtain the precious license before the Feb. 2 policies began.
By that Feb. 2 date, the ITIN started to be a worthless piece of paper. The so-called seguro verde lost its value.
While Nolo Martínez left the Governor’s Office for Hispanic/Latino Affairs, a nightmare was initiated for Latinos who visited the DMV locations in Mecklenburg County. Stories of an unspoken policy of rejection of anyone who looks Hispanic or who has a Spanish-speaking accent at the Department of Transportation customer service branch offices have since prevailed.
I have personally witnessed the refusal of a naturalized citizen who lived in the US for 40 years. I have seen another legal resident, the mother of a citizen, being rebuffed after showing her legal resident card, social security card and a cable bill. The most recent episode of refusal I have witnessed was of a high school student who had the ITIN, a school ID (an Official North Carolina School Registration record) and statements of his savings account with his address.
Locally, the Latin American Coalition has received constant complaints.
The validity of the ITIN was a myth used by many of the anti-immigration activists for political gains. Members of the staff of Congresswoman Sue Myrick talked about it at Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory’s Immigration Study Commission sessions. ITIN was the focus of federal bills proposed by House members Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry, who supported the Real ID Act.
Last Thursday, I spoke with Marisol Jiménez, an executive of El Pueblo (an NC advocacy organization dedicated to Latino rights) and one of the few Hispanic registered lobbyists before the Legislature. She was devastated because the overwhelming vote against the ITIN at the Legislature was a clear defeat for immigrant rights.
Rafael Prieto Zartha is the editor of the newspaper Mi Gente.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2006.
How in the name of Hades can you advocate using as a means to establish that an applicant is legally resident in the state and country a document that does not require that the holder have confirmed their identity and their legal residency status?
There’s no excuse for DMV personnel turning aside people who have valid ID, are legally resident in the U.S. and are eligible for a license. But there is also no excuse for trying to keep in the system the use of a dosumcent that is worthless to the purpose that it was being put by the DMV. You do not solve the problem of discriminaton against legally resident Hispanics by attempting to make it easier for illegal aliens to fraudulently acquire identity documents. Indeed you make it worse. I am an immigrant to this country. A legal immigrant. The very LAST thing I need to do in my own self interest is exacerbate ethnic discrimination by some slavish adherence to ethnicity over the law. You are not helping any of us with this nonsense.
i agree,undocumented immigrants,dont need license to operate a vehicle,most of them dont have car insurance and if they have a car accident we the victims need to pay to fix our cars,if they want they want the privilidge to drive they need to come legal to this country
So the ITIN cards don’t work and people will need a SS card to get a license,do they think immigrants can’t obtain one? In Atlanta it takes about 3 days and 100 bucks to make a SS card and with the rise of immigrant workers and competition I bet you could find one cheaper than that. The immigrants will still drive and the assholes at the DMV will discriminate until they loose thier jobs.
Once again, Mr. Zartha fails to recognise that these problems are caused by the many people who choose to come here illegally. I continue to feel badly that these folks are causing me what some would consider racist thinking. I have spent my life welcoming immigrants to this country and feeling pride that people want to leave their countries and come here. Now, there are so many illegal hispanics, I can’t help but look at hispanics and wonder if they are here illegally or not. A friend of mine who is a school teacher and is here legally has used up a three year visa and is now having to go through the legal process to get it renewed. We should not send the message to people who come here legally that all they did was for nothing and that we are going to allow criminals to stay here and use our social system.
Atlanta, if you don’t believe that documents that do not perform the functon to which they are used should be eliminated simply because there are other mechanisms for fraud, perhaps we should just eliminate standards completely? After all, it’s just about immigrants driving, right? OK, now read slowly and pay attention: a state issued ID -a DL- is used as de facto proof of legal residence. See, THAT would be why illegal aliens (or if you insist that they’re just immigrants, let’s at least categorize them completely enough to not confuse them with folks like myself. We’ll call them criminal immigrants) want them in the first place. It’s not about driving.