Civil rights groups denounce REAL ID
By
LeiLani Dowell
Published Apr 14, 2005 9:26 PM
More than 60 different civil and human rights
organizations have denounced the “REAL ID Act” passed by the House
of Representatives on Feb. 10. This insidiously anti-immigrant act is attached
to an $81-billion war appropriations bill. The Senate is set to vote on this
measure on April 14.
The “REAL ID Act” contains a laundry list
of attacks against immigrants.
It would prohibit federal agencies and
airlines from accepting state-issued identification cards and drivers’
licenses that could have been issued without verifying recipients’
immigration status.
In effect, this would require state motor vehicle
departments to enforce immigration laws.
The money needed to upgrade the
systems of many of these agencies could be anywhere from $500 to $700
million.
The news agency UPI estimates that there are 12 million
undocumented workers in the United States. These immigrant workers are often
forced by neoliberal economic policies or war imposed on their home countries by
the United States to seek work here.
Eleven states currently offer
drivers’ licenses to undocumented workers. Passage of the act would ensure
that these 12 million workers—many of whom need to drive to jobs or get
employment as drivers—would be unlicensed.
If passed, a state
technically would not have to comply with the law, but if it didn’t any
license it issued would not be recognized by airlines or federal agencies.
Exactly how this is to be enforced is not clear. But if licenses were to
be suspended by cross-checking information with Social Security records—as
was done recently in New York and other cities— it would also serve as an
attack on transgender and transsexual people.
If the sex of an individual
in Social Security records doesn’t match their driver’s license,
that person will also lose the right to drive. In New York, hundreds of trans
people have already received letters threatening suspension of their
licenses.
Anti-domestic-violence advocacy groups also caution that passage
of the REAL ID Act would pose a threat to all survivors of domestic violence,
because it would require them to list their principal residential address on
their driver’s license and state identification card.
The group
Legal Momentum: Advan cing Women’s Rights states, “For people
fleeing domestic abuse or stalking, the option to use an alternate address is
not a matter of convenience or preference; it can be a matter of life or
death.”
Fight for immigrant rights!
In what Wade
Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights,
calls “the boldest executive branch power grab we have seen in
decades,” the act includes a section called “Waiver of Laws
Necessary for Improve ment of Barriers at Borders.”
This gives the
secretary of Homeland Security ultimate authority to waive all laws necessary
“to ensure expeditious con struc tion of … barriers and
roads.” In addition, it bars courts from hearing any claims based on such
actions. Currently a wall is being built across the San Diego-Mexico border that
has prompted protests by workers and activists on each side of the
border.
With this new provision, the secretary of Homeland Security could
suddenly declare the Minutemen—an armed vigilante group terrorizing
immigrants at the Arizona-Mexico border—a legal enforcement agency. The
possibilities for the misuse of power under this provision are
endless.
The act would also make it harder for immigrants to be approved
for asylum in the United States and prevent them from appealing unfavorable
decisions from immigration judges, including deportation. This would include
lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and trans people who are fleeing persecution. And
it would make it more difficult for domestic abuse survivors to seek asylum in
the U.S., which contradicts the Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994.
The appropriations bill, which is being called a “must-pass”
bill in the media, includes funding for the illegal and atrocious wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. This makes the connections between the trumped up “war on
terror” at home and abroad even clearer.
The resistance needed to
combat these wars is building. Forces are mobilizing for a National Day for
Immigrant Rights on April 27 in Washington, D.C., and for a “Jobs Not
War” May Day rally on May 1 in New York City.
For more information
on the April 27 demonstration, contact (419) 243-3456. For more information on
the May 1 demonstration, contact (212) 633-6646.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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