NOT JUST IN FERGUSON

A recent Department of Justice report found that courts and law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri, are systematically and purposefully taking money from the pockets of poor people—disproportionately from black people—to put into court coffers. The context may be different in California, but many of the practices are chillingly similar. As a result, over four million Californians do not have valid driver’s licenses because they cannot afford to pay traffic fines and fees. These suspensions make it harder for people to get and keep jobs, further impeding their ability to pay their debt. They harm credit ratings. They raise public safety concerns. Ultimately they keep people in long cycles of poverty that are difficult, if not impossible to overcome. This report highlights the growing trend of license suspensions, how the problem happens, the impact on families and communities, and what can and should be done about it. Click here to read the full report.

Via: http://www.anewwayoflife.org/category/blog/

DMV prepares to issue driver's licenses to people who are here illegally

By PATRICK MCGREEVY
December 11, 2014

Just weeks before California begins to issue driver's licenses to people in the country illegally, the Department of Motor Vehicles has opened four new offices and hired more than 900 additional staffers to help handle the expected flood of applicants.

State officials expect that 1.4 million immigrants who are not lawfully in the country will apply for specially marked licenses during the first three years beginning Jan. 2. An extra $141 million has been budgeted to handle the applications.

"We've been getting ready for over a year," said DMV spokesman Armando Botello. "We are definitely ready."

The agency has opened new offices in Granada Hills; the Orange County city of Stanton; Lompoc, a town in Santa Barbara County; and San Jose.

Applicants can make appointments at any DMV office at https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv or by calling 800-777-0133. The four new offices also accommodate people without appointments.

The DMV is offering extended Saturday hours by appointment for all new license applicants at up to 60 field offices starting Jan. 3. A list of those offices will be made available on the agency's website.

Immigrants were allowed to make appointments for the new year starting Nov. 12. In the 21/2 weeks after that date, 378,891 people made appointments — more than twice the number during the same period last year, according to a DMV spokeswoman.

More than half of the new appointments were for people seeking their first driver's license from the state.

"People are really excited about it," said Rita Medina, a policy advocate for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Noting that 71% of people who applied for a new driver authorization card in Nevada this year failed the written exam in the first three days of the program, the coalition is offering classes to help applicants pass the test in California, Medina said.

Applicants will have to complete a form and provide documents to verify their identities and show that they reside in California. They will also be required to provide a thumb print, pass vision and written tests and schedule a behind-the-wheel driving test.

The fee for a license is $33, and those who register a vehicle will have to show proof of insurance, which can be obtained through the California Low Cost Auto Insurance program under a state law passed this year.

The special licenses will look like other California licenses but have the words "federal limits apply" on the front and, "This card is not acceptable for official federal purposes," on the back. They cannot be used as identification to board an airplane, for example.

Immigrant-rights advocates fought to minimize the design differences for fear that landlords, merchants and others who may be presented with the cards might discriminate against those they can see are in the country illegally.

The law allowing the special licenses was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in October 2013. "No longer are undocumented people in the shadows," Brown said then.

Most Republicans in the Legislature had voted against the measure.

"We heard from Californians with a variety of concerns around this new law, including costs to taxpayers for the program that have been estimated in the millions just to get it started in January," Amanda Fulkerson, a spokeswoman for the Assembly Republican Caucus, said this week.

Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), chairman of the California Legislative Latino Caucus and the measure's author, has argued from the beginning that it would make California roads safer by requiring immigrants who are already driving to pass written and road-skill tests.

"Our state is getting ready to offer these families a chance to get to work, a chance to bring their children to school and a chance at making it to the hospital during medical emergencies by allowing undocumented Californians to earn a driver's license," Alejo said this week.

In New Mexico, Gov. Susana Martinez has sought for years to repeal a 2003 law allowing driver's licenses to be issued to residents without regard to immigration status. She has maintained that immigrants from other states have poured into New Mexico to obtain licenses fraudulently.

California officials say they have safeguards in place here to prevent fraud, including the requirement that immigrants document their residency. In addition, the special licenses will have the same high-tech features that have protected regular licenses from counterfeit and altering since 2010.

Those include images visible only under ultraviolet light and special laser perforations.

More information on the license requirement and study materials is available on the DMV website.

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-immigrant-licenses-20141211-story.html

Immigration bills benefited from a more engaged Gov. Brown

SACRAMENTO — Tom Ammiano was frustrated. 

Gov. Jerry Brown had refused to meet with him, said the Democratic assemblyman from San Francisco, to talk about the Trust Act. Ammiano had proposed it to prevent immigrants in the U.S. illegally from being turned over to federal officials for possible deportation when arrested by local authorities.

Eventually, Brown skewered the measure with his veto pen, saying the bill was "fatally flawed" because it might have let some serious criminals escape deportation.

That was last year. This year, things were different. Ammiano said the two had multiple meetings in Brown's office, where they discussed its threadbare carpet, their shared Roman Catholicism — and the Trust Act.

"He said, 'I have some tweaks,'" Ammiano recalled. "Then we talked turkey and … came up with what everybody could live with."

Brown signed the measure into law about a week ago, one of 11 immigrant-related bills he accepted this year. He also significantly expanded driver's licenses for immigrants without documents. He rejected a measure to allow noncitizens to serve on juries, but gave those in the U.S. illegally permission to be lawyers and signed a bill protecting them from employers who threaten to report their status.

Brown's embrace of new immigrant rights is a shift from three years ago, when he openly opposed the driver's license idea while running for governor. He signed a small handful of immigrant-rights bills last year, permitting driver's licenses for those eligible for temporary federal work permits and giving undocumented college students access to public financial aid. But mostly, he stayed focused on the state's budget morass.

Now, with the fiscal crisis behind him, legislators describe the governor as more approachable and engaged. Instead of being handed off to his staffers, they hashed out differences with him face to face.

It helped that the Legislature's 25-member Latino caucus, which led the charge on many immigrant bills, is mostly Democratic and that the party won supermajorities in both houses last November. This year's efforts also coincided with a new recognition of California's changing demographics: Even the Republican Party that once rallied voters against illegal immigrants has launched a Latino outreach effort.

"There is a change," said Brown, who is expected to run for reelection next year in a state where 20% of voters are Latino and 10% are of Asian descent. "It's in part the sheer numbers and participation by immigrants in the life of our communities. It's also the advocacy and impressive work of immigrant groups and their supporters."

…

The driver's license law was long in the making.

Los Angeles City Councilman Gil Cedillo began working on the issue in 1997, when he was first elected to the Legislature. He eventually persuaded lawmakers to pass a bill that Gov. Gray Davis signed in 2003.

Arnold Schwarzenegger canceled the measure later that year, after replacing Davis in the recall election.

Ten years on, "what [has] changed was the political leadership and … the political climate," Cedillo said in an interview last week.

Even so, the license expansion would have foundered this year but for one lawmaker's chance remark to Brown.

The bill's author, Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), planned to table it amid a fight over a distinguishing mark on the licenses — something Brown said federal law required.

With only one more day to go in the legislative session, Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) mentioned the stalled bill to the governor in a Capitol hallway. The senator said Brown, surprised, told him: "Send me the bill. I'll sign it."

Seizing the moment, DeLeon and a few colleagues revived the bill in the Senate, which passed it just hours before the Legislature adjourned. The Assembly quickly followed suit.

A couple of weeks later, more than 40 domestic workers — many of them Latino immigrants — were ushered into the governor's inner office, where they tearfully watched him sign another long-sought bill. It requires overtime pay for nannies, healthcare aides and other personal attendants, a goal of community activists since 2006.