Civil rights groups denounce REAL ID

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.