While half the federal government ran around last week like a chicken with its head chopped off in a made-for-TV display of terror preparedness, the gray-haired ladies behind the counter at North Carolina DMV may well have been issuing driver’s licenses to the Jihad Class of “04. That is, if they hadn’t done so already.
North Carolina is among a handful of states quickly gaining a national reputation as the slackest in the nation when it comes to issuing drivers’ licenses and identity cards. In fact, as far as identification standards go, it’s now tougher to get a license in NC if you’re a law abiding US citizen than if you’re not.
Short of divine intervention by Allah Himself, there was no way for federal agents scrutinizing folks’ identities at airports here or abroad last week to know exactly who was standing in front of them if the guy presented a North Carolina driver’s license. He could be who it says he is, or just about anybody else.
Why some of the September 11 terrorists bothered to drive all the way to Virginia, where they could bribe DMV officials, is beyond me. All they needed to get NC licenses were flight school enrollment documents signed by school officials, their Saudi passports (whether they were here legally or not) and an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN).
An ITIN is a tax processing number the IRS gives out, in the words of Congressman Tom Tancredo, “like candy” to people who need a tax number to work but are not eligible to obtain a Social Security number. The cards were intended to allow foreigners who have business interests here but don’t live here to pay taxes. They’re so easy to obtain that the IRS has issued six million since 1996. Only two million have ever been used to file tax forms. The status of the rest is unknown.
Since ITIN cards provide no proof that those who possess them are here legally, much less that they actually are who they claim to be, one has to wonder why North Carolina officials are accepting them in lieu of social security cards from those seeking identification cards and driver’s licenses, which can then be used to slide through airport security.
The situation so concerned IRS officials that they sent a letter this fall to the nation’s governors asking them to stop using ITINs. North Carolina is one of six states that use ITINs as a primary requirement for a driver’s license.
NC Governor Mike Easley’s office never provided an answer to my question about his position on ITINs but directed me to department of transportation officials who proceeded to play a semantics game with me, insisting that the IRS letter asked that they stop using ITINs as a form of “identification.” Since ITINs are technically listed in the driver’s manual under the driver’s license “Social Security Requirement” and not the column that says “Identification Requirements,” the IRS’ request doesn’t apply to North Carolina, they say, so they plan to ignore it.
It’s not the only national security plea the Easley administration, the state legislature and the DMV have ignored this fall. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned state and local officials across the nation to stop accepting Mexican matricula consular cards as identification for driver’s licenses. The matricula cards don’t prove legal residence in this country and lack standardized issuing procedures or a database for verification purposes. Earlier this year, FBI officials told a Senate committee that the cards pose a criminal and terrorist threat, and that a thriving black market makes them easy to obtain.
Thirteen states currently accept the cards, but North Carolina is the only one that takes the matricula mess one step further by also accepting two even less verifiable documents — Mexican voter and military ID cards — as an individual’s primary form of identification.
Before September 11, when the object of issuing illegal aliens driver’s licenses was to make our roads safer, it was merely amusing when local cops found three state-issued licenses on a single individual identifying him as three different people. Even then, local and national law enforcement knew that some of these people were shedding identities every time they committed a new crime. But that was no big deal as long as they didn’t blow up major landmarks and only robbed and maimed other people just like those who technically don’t live here.
Now, in the post-9/11 era, a North Carolina license or identification card that allows someone through security at Douglas International airport is a matter of life and death. So why won’t state leaders budge?
Probably because if they did, the cheap illegal labor our low identification standards have attracted to this state might go somewhere else. That would mean North Carolina employers who exploit illegal workers — and there are many, especially in the construction industry — might have to start hiring legal workers to fill those jobs and actually comply with labor and wage laws.
That’d be a disaster for the Easley crowd, but not as big a disaster as the one that could be created if a militant fanatic clutching a state-issued identification card uses it to board a plane.
Contact Tara Servatius at tara.servatius@cln.com
This article appears in Dec 31, 2003 – Jan 6, 2004.
