Photo: Harvey Finkle
Jubilation in the Latino community greeted Gov. Brown’s signing of a new law which will permit California again to issue drivers licenses to undocumented residents of the state. On Oct. 3, 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB 60, which grants undocumented immigrants access to apply for driver’s licenses. However those licenses will be different than the regular ones: They’ll be marked “DP” (driver’s privilege) instead of “DL” (driver’s license). The licenses will also say that they “do not establish eligibility for employment or public benefit.” The new license program is to begin in January 2015.
For decades this issue has repeatedly been fought out in the California legislature. Before the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, requirements for ID to prove entitlement to a drivers license were fairly loose, and it was not unusual for undocumented to have licenses. Then, in the 9/11 aftermath, stricter proof of lawful residence were imposed all over the US. To grant some relief to the undocumented, in 2003 former Gov. Gray Davis signed a law in 2003 to confer drivers licenses on undocumented immigrants. But then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it in September 2004.
Just because people didn’t have legal drivers licenses they didn’t stop driving. Of course, life had to go on. But then something changed.
Now, as growers are indicating that, due to the clampdown at the border, they have a labor shortage in relation to harvest. The need the workers who are here to transport themselves to work in the fields. It is not an accident that when the bill’s progress was blocked, Assemblyman Luis Alejo from an agricultural area—Watsonville—came to the rescue with amendments that resulted in passage of the new law.
Growers are undoubtedly looking at relief from robots in the field in the future, but for the present both they and undocumented immigrants, desperate for the right to drive, are breathing a sigh of happy relief.
Those are not the only new laws in California that help the undocumented, sometimes pitting California against the federal government. California’s Trust Act limits the effect of the federal Secure Communities program, which permits ICE to place a hold on anyone in jail. If one were jailed for a traffic ticket, before the Trust Act, if ICE put a hold on someone, they couldn’t bail out even though they weren’t convicted of any crime. Under the new law, undocumented immigrants would have to be charged with or convicted of a serious offense before ICE could put a hold on them and transfer them to federal immigration authorities for possible deportation.
Another pro-immigrant bill, AB 1024, permits an undocumented immigrant who has passed the California examination for attorneys to become an attorney. The bill was spurred on by the case of Sergio Garcia, who 19 years ago was approved for a green card, but is still on the waiting list to receive it. Presently, there is only one other undocumented immigrant in California who has passed the exam, so the new law immediately affects only these two persons. But it is hoped that other states will do likewise.
