Suman Raghunathan

New York’s Scarlet Letter: Greenlighting Separate, but Definitely not Equal

Immigrant groups and much of the New York State Legislature are up in arms over Governor Spitzer’s recently-amended proposal to establish a three-tiered driver’s license system, which would grant a provisional license to undocumented immigrants.

The amended plan (I like to call it Driver’s License 2.0) is a stupendous example of no-win public policy
reportedly forced upon Spitzer by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Contrary to popular belief (and those who’ve been watching Lou Dobbs continue his long-term hissy fit on immigration), the proposal will adversely affect all New Yorkers by segregating residents (and workers) into a three-tiered class system. Pushing the state’s estimated one million undocumented immigrants closer to the bottom of this system will not help New York State’s middle class, and it definitely won’t help immigrant workers.

The Governor’s latest driver’s license plan would issue different types of licenses to residents: one to US citizens, another to legal permanent residents, and a third to undocumented immigrants that would qualify them to drive but not for air travel or to enter federal buildings.

By highlighting residents’ immigration status with a scarlet letter – indicated by the type of license people receive – the new proposal will give the green light to employers to treat immigrants differently based on their immigration status. Armed with this information, employers will likely continue to threaten their undocumented workers with deportation when those employees demand fair pay or complain about workplace safety violations. When labor standards are eroded in the workplace this way, no one wins: particularly not New York’s middle class. When and only when employers are able to take advantage of immigrant workers do such these workers undermine middle class workers’ rights. That’s why we need to ensure labor laws are applied equally to all workers and that we do nothing to further identify those workers whose rights are the easiest to abuse. New York’s three tiered driver’s license program gives illegal immigrants the right to drive and employers the de facto right to abuse them in the workplace. The result will be more worker exploitation, harassment, and discrimination statewide.

The Governor should return to his original proposal to issue a universal driver’s license to all residents who can prove their identity via a secure process.

I've already waxed rhapsodic about how studies found the No-Match system provided unscrupulous bosses with fodder to blackmail their workers: after receiving a no-match letter, one in four workers were fired when they asked for safe working conditions. One in five workers was fired after attempting to unionize.

A three-tiered license system that singles out undocumented applicants is also profoundly, incredibly, fantastically (I’m running out of superlatives here…) impractical. Undocumented residents aren’t going to opt in for a driver’s license that exposes them to harassment at the hands of authorities such as the police or their employers. We know this from other states’ examples. Tennessee and New Mexico both previously implemented two-tier licensing systems: one license for US citizens and legal permanent residents, and another for undocumented ones. Both states abandoned these systems as costly and impractical: discrimination and harassment of US citizens and legal permanent residents soared because authorities assumed immigrants were undocumented (hello, racial profiling 2.0!), and insurance rates did not budge. When New Mexico amended its policy to issue licenses to all residents who could prove their identity regardless of their immigration status, auto insurance rates plunged by fifty percent. Surprise, surprise.

Riverside, NJ provides a stellar example of what happens to communities when undocumented immigrants are prevented from engaging in the economy and local institutions. After a 2006 local law targeting those who rented to or employed undocumented immigrants, most of Riverside’s 3,000 immigrants– who revitalized its business district and revived its economic base with shops serving immigrant consumers - left. In the aftermath, Riverside has reverted to a ghost town, with vacant and boarded-up businesses. Stores report sales have plummeted 50 percent. Despite a recent reversal of the ordinance, neither Riverside’s remaining immigrants nor its middle class residents benefited from the misguided legislation and its withering impact on the local economy. Riverside’s clearly brilliant Mayor George Conard (who voted for the original anti-immigrant law)said,

I didn’t think people knew there would be such an economic burden…A lot of people did not look three years out.”

Um, hello, isn’t that what long-term economic planning is for? Clearly Riverside chooses its public servants carefully.

Riverside’s example has profound implications for New York. At its worst, Governor Spitzer’s current driver’s license proposal will create a silent minority of nearly one million undocumented workers statewide who will be unable to fully engage in the economy. It will stifle the economic growth New York State depends upon from immigrant workers and families, and threatens to create many Riversides statewide.

Tax bases will suffer: an Adelphi University report released this summer found Long Island Latinos (many of them immigrants) contribute $145 million annually in taxes to the local economy, a net positive after reconciling the taxes they paid with the services they used. Companies will lose workers, affecting industries from home health care to hotels and restaurants, childcare, construction and building trades, and manufacturing. The Adelphi report found much of the Long Island economy’s growth over the past decade was fueled by Latino-owned businesses, which contributed nearly $2 billion annually in sales.

Guess what? Many of those businesses and much of that growth depends upon immigrant workers being able to, um, get to work. Which in most of the state (calm down, fellow New Yorkers! I love our subway too!) only happens when people have a driver’s license so they can drive to work.

Oh, Eliot. Take me back to Driver’s License 1.0, please.

Suman Raghunathan: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 8:05 AM, Nov 07, 2007 in Immigration
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