Starting this November, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles has stopped accepting a federal work permit as proof of residency for immigrants applying for a driver’s license. Kent Willis, Director of the Virginia Branch of the ACLU says this will be a major problem for over 100 thousand immigrants living in Virginia, even the legal ones.
Kent Willis: DMV has now created a terrific hardship for individuals living in Virginia, who are here legally, who are looking for a job, or trying to keep a job, because often those jobs will require a drivers license. People who come from other countries to Virginia to work, who are here legally, are now being denied one of the things that will help them get work.
Melinda Stokes, a representative for DMV, disagrees. She says there are lots of ways immigrants can prove residency without federal work papers, which are also known as EADs or Form 1-766.
Melinda Stokes: There are over two hundred documents that are proof of legal presence, identity, residency, social security number. Everyone who can get Federal Work Papers should be able to get a drivers license should be able to get a drivers license too. When you’re issued an EAD, you need to have another form of ID to get that, and that particular form of ID is acceptable for a driver’s license.
According to Stokes, the new policy was sparked by an incident in August, where Carlos Martinelly Montano, a 23-year-old immigrant from Bolivia, was involved in a drunk driving accident that killed one woman, and injured two other people.
Stokes: From what I understand, the law enforcement brought concerns, to the governors office, about the I-766, as a reaction to that incident.
This policy is already drawing criticism from people like Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, a Richmond based lobbyist for immigrants rights. She agrees with Willis that the policy doesn’t make sense, and that it unfairly targets immigrants instead of drunk drivers.
Gastanaga: I think it was precipitous, ill considered, and arbitrary.
Willis, and the ACLU that Montano didn’t have a driver’s license to begin with, so this policy just makes things harder for immigrants, without preventing these sorts of incidents.
Willis: The fact that he was here legally as a result of getting this document is not related to the fact that he was drinking and driving. What you had was, a tragic accident, you have a generally anti-immigrant sentiment in Virginia, that’s been around for quite a while, and you had a need for politicians in Virginia to do something about it, and they struck at a kind of obvious target, in the sense that it’s a big one, but not obvious in the sense that its unrelated to the accident.
But according to Stokes, the DMV has had problems with the reliability of EADs, and that’s a big part of why they decided to stop accepting them.
Stokes: There were concerns regarding the I66’s reliability, is it proof that a person here is legally in the country, or not?
Willis disagrees; He says there’s no evidence Federal Work Papers are unreliable.
Willis: I suppose someone could obtain one of these documents illegally or forged or whatever, but that’s not an issue, and no ones claiming that, and you could claim that about any document, it’s not as if Virginia has determined there’s something unreliable or wrong with this document, and that’s what’s so baffling about the decision not to accept this document.
Gastanaga: I think it was precipitous, ill considered, and arbitrary.
It’s unclear how many people will be affected by it, and how much, because this policy is still very new. Willis said that the ACLU has spoken to a number of people are already having trouble getting a drivers license because of this new policy.
Willis: We’ve been interviewing individuals from across the state who have been caught up in this, that DMV is not using, or not allowing people to use this document, and it is causing a lot of problems for them.
But Stokes cautioned that the policy is still too new to be certain what its effects will be, and that there are so many other ways to prove residency, she doesn’t think this will be a problem.
Stokes: We’ve gotten some percentages back, I think its less than a hundred folks. We’re still working with them to try to find alternate documents for proof of their legal presence. So it seems to be a small impact so far. But of course, this is brand new. We’ll see over the course of the year how many folks are impacted.
This policy is already drawing criticism from people like Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, a Richmond based lobbyist for immigrants rights. She agrees with Willis that the policy doesn’t make sense, and that it unfairly targets immigrants instead of drunk drivers.
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