PA PRESS/ Driver Licenses
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Posted on Tue, Oct. 14, 2003
Pa. rules beleaguer noncitizens trying to obtain driver's licenses
By Maria Panaritis
Inquirer Staff Writer
XXXXXXX has finished her shift at a King of Prussia mall pretzel shop and is seated beside her husband, who flashes a fistful of company ID cards and a streak of frustration.
"We are not terrorists," declares XXXXXX, a xxxxx awaiting permanent U.S. residency for himself and his xxxxxx wife. "I work for xxxxxx"
XXXXX, a telecommunications engineer for the defense contractor for eight years, believes the state Department of Transportation should not have denied his wife a driver's license simply because her immigration documents were valid for less than a year.
"Every criminal in Pennsylvania can have a driver's license - and not my wife?" XXXXX said. He drives her to work each day, sometimes forcing her to roam the mall until he returns.
XXXXXXX and an unknown number of other foreign nationals are casualties of a state law - rules PennDot engineered after 9/11 but which it is struggling to put into practice.
In April 2002, the agency made it harder for noncitizens to receive driver's licenses and had the legislature enact a law cementing the rules. Many of the Sept. 11 terrorists had received state-issued licenses.
Instead of its practice of issuing licenses for a four-year period, PennDot now grants licenses to foreign nationals only if their documents will be valid for a year or longer and only for the period of time until the documents expire.
PennDot claims it formally implemented the rules a month ago, as required by the legislature when it passed the law in late 2002. But implementation has been anything but clear-cut, and the agency appears to be retreating from some of its recommended changes.
The agency has drafted no regulations spelling out what immigration documents are acceptable, saying regulations are unnecessary. But that has left office workers denying some applicants without knowing what additional paperwork could render them eligible.
PennDot said last week it will ignore a part of the law allowing it to mark licenses "noncitizen." The law had drawn cries of discrimination from immigrant advocates late last year when Gov. Mark Schweiker signed the bill into law. PennDot now calls it unnecessary.
Top PennDot officials met Sept. 29 with the law's harshest critics and agreed to accept from them a set of recommended changes by Oct. 31.
"If you look at it, the law does give us the ability to be flexible," said Steve Kozar, acting division chief of PennDot's Driver Licensing division. "By working with these advocacy groups, it allows us to ask, how can we be flexible and still be confident that we're issuing licenses to people who should be getting them?"
One of the biggest challenges, Kozar said, has been training the agency's employees to understand immigration documents - a dense web of forms and rules that confound even immigration lawyers.
In theory, PennDot workers are expected to advise people - such as foreign students - to return with supplemental paperwork, such as a letter from their U.S. university, if their visas are set to expire in less than a year. But that has not happened with consistency.
"It's very confusing," Kozar said. "We have to get all the clerks - not only do we have permanent but seasonal temporary clerks - to be trained on this. The training is a daunting task."
The agency has held just one training session for office supervisors, he said.
Opponents predicted such a morass as restrictive laws took hold after the 9/11 attacks.
Pennsylvania was one of eight states last year that enacted laws limiting a noncitizen's ability to get a driver's license, said Tyler Moran, with the National Immigration Law Center.
The official who asked Pennsylvania legislators to enact the tougher law was state Deputy Transportation Secretary Betty Serian. Serian also heads a task force on ID security for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
Her task force recommends that states do what Pennsylvania and only 11 others do: tie driver's license expiration dates to immigration documents.
But opponents have called such measures misguided. Such a bill is stalled in Congress.
"To expect our driver license offices to navigate immigration laws is a recipe for disaster for our relations with the immigrant community," said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington.
"It is not easy to know whether someone is in violation of their immigration status," Edgar said.
For example, someone could have an expired visa in their passport but - in the case of some asylum-seekers - remain lawfully in the country. Also, many people awaiting green cards are granted employment-authorization documents - the right to work while they await a ruling - for only a year at a time.
In one local case involving a single PennDot office, an immigrant received a license while another with the same legal status was denied, said Jeanne McGuire, executive director of the Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia.
"There has to be a system that's easy enough for your line clerk to understand," McGuire said.
Immigrant advocates brought such tales to their meeting with PennDot in Harrisburg.
"They have indicated to us that they're committed to licensing everyone that's eligible," said Judith Bernstein-Baker, executive director of immigration services for HIAS and Council Migration Services, a Philadelphia group. "And we are going to continue in good faith to discuss with them the best way to do that."
One option - spelling out in writing what immigration forms should be brought to a PennDot center - is practically unworkable, Kozar said.
"There are so many possibilities of combinations, you could never put it all onto a pamphlet," he said.
Indeed, XXXXX finds this to be a core problem.
Before he and his wife visited PennDot's Norristown office in July 2002, XXXXX said he checked the agency's Web site and called to make sure he was bringing the correct documents.
He showed up with a $30 check; a letter from the Social Security Administration; a 2001 joint tax return listing his wife's name; the visa she held at the time, which was 10 months from expiration; a marriage certificate from Indonesia; a letter from xxxx confirming his employment and green-card application; a slew of utility bills; and a copy of his lease.
The pair were turned away, though, when a clerk saw the 10-month expiration date. They left "humiliated," XXXX said.
The couple have since applied for green cards and have federal employment-authorization documents. XXXXX said PennDot has not yet answered the question: Do you accept EAD for driver's licenses?
"They should publish their policy clearly and say what they accept and why," he said. "Otherwise they're going to get sued."
Kozar said PennDot's policy is evolving. In early 2002, for example, the agency rejected applicants with pending immigration status, such as XXXXXXX, who has a pending U.S. residency application.
"She wouldn't be rejected now," Kozar said.
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Contact Maria Panaritis at 215-702-7805 or
mpanaritis@phillynews.com.
Claim by Kozar to be mentioned....
