Guest Column
Real ID, States and Cities
Migration News
Real ID. Before the September 11, 2001 hijackings, 18 of the 19
terrorists had obtained, legitimately or by fraud, IDs such as driver's
licenses that allowed them to board planes and travel. The Real ID Act of
2005 required states to require new applicants for driver's licenses and
state ID cards to verify their legal status, and to re-verify all US drivers
by December 2014 (three years later for those over 50).
States had to file plans with DHS that documented their efforts to implement
federal Real ID requirements by March 31, 2008 or request extensions. Most
requested extensions. DHS considered Montana and New Hampshire to be making
progress toward implementation even though their legislatures passed
resolutions opposing Real ID. Maine and South Carolina also met enough of
the 18 federal benchmarks to allow DHS to certify that they were making
progress to implement Real ID.
State legislatures have been flooded with bills to deal with immigration,
over 600 in January-February 2003, according to the National Conference of
State Legislatures. Meanwhile, states that have passed laws requiring their
employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check new hires are finding
that some legal workers are wrongly considered unauthorized.
Arizona. Arizona county attorneys on March 1, 2008 began to enforce
the state's employer sanctions law after the federal Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals refused to issue an injunction to stop enforcement. Arizona
requires employers to participate in the federal government's E-Verify
system, which checks the information provided by new hires against data in
Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security
databases.
By April 2008, some unauthorized foreigners were reported to be leaving
Arizona, and businesses catering to them reported sharp drops in sales.
Some reports emphasized that the downturn in construction was also a major
factor pushing workers out of the state.
Newspapers profiled unauthorized workers whose status was discovered by
E-Verify, as well as some legal workers that appeared to be unauthorized in
government databases. Many of the problems with legal workers involved
naturalized US citizens. Between October 2006 and March 2007, about 3,200
foreign-born US citizens were at first tagged as unauthorized by E-Verify.
About 60 percent of Arizona residents live in Maricopa County, where Sheriff
Joe Arpaio has instructed deputies to detain suspected unauthorized
foreigners if they are stopped for violations of state and local laws. Over
1,000 suspected unauthorized foreigners have been detained, and Arpaio said:
"The more who leave, the better. They shouldn't be here in the first
place."
State Representative Russell Pearce (R-Mesa), who spearheaded the package of
laws (Prop 200) that denies business licenses to employers convicted of
hiring unauthorized workers, announced that he may introduce a law requiring
Arizona to challenge the provision of the 14th amendment that considers
babies born in the US to be US citizens. Pearce is a former sheriff's
deputy wounded by a gang member.
Pearce opposes an effort to create a pilot guest worker program in Arizona.
A pending state bill would create a program that would allow Mexican workers
to be employed in the state up to two years if employers can demonstrate
they face labor shortages. The Arizona Industrial Commission would regulate
the program.
More states are enacting laws requiring their employers to use E-Verify to
check that new hires are legally authorized to work in the US. SB 81,
signed into law in Utah in March 2008, requires public employers and public
contractors to use the E-Verify system to check on the legal status of new
employees beginning July 1, 2009.
SB 2988, signed into law in Mississippi in March 2008, requires
employers to participate in E-Verify. Public agencies and private employers
must enroll by July 1, 2008, and all of the state's employers must use
E-Verify by July 1, 2011. Violators can lose their business licenses for
one year and be barred from receiving public contracts.
Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina and Utah in Spring 2008 moved
toward enactment of state laws that require employers to use E-Verify. Most
of these laws include provisions similar to those in the Arizona law that
allow revocation of the business licenses of employers who are found to have
hired unauthorized workers a second time. E-Verify does not verify
identity, so an unauthorized worker who uses the SSN of a lawful worker will
not be detected.
A bill introduced in Tennessee would make it unlawful for
unauthorized workers to receive payment for their work, subjecting those who
receive wages to fines of up to $500 and six months in jail.
San Francisco in April 2008 launched an $83,000 campaign to advertise
its policy of giving sanctuary to unauthorized foreigners. Mayor Gavin
Newsom said the city is: "inviting people to come out of the shadows and
take advantage of services."
San Francisco has been a sanctuary city since 1989, and is believed to be
the first US city to advertise, in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and
Russian, that it does not assist federal agents to enforce immigration
laws. Since 2007, San Francisco has issued ID cards to anyone who lives in
the city, regardless of legal status.
Los Angeles is debating whether to maintain Special Order 40, a 1979
ordinance that lays out the conditions under which police officers
investigate the immigration status of persons they arrest. Under Special
Order 40, Los Angeles police "officers shall not initiate police action with
the objective of discovering the alien status of a person," and cannot
arrest suspects for being unauthorized.
After a high-school football star was killed by an unauthorized gang member,
the Los Angeles city council in April 2008 considered a proposal to require
police officers to check the immigration status of suspected gang members.
Education. State high-school drop-out data vary widely, according to
a March 20, 2008 report in the New York Times. About 70 percent of the one
million teens who begin ninth grade graduate four years later, but there is
no single federal formula to calculate drop-out rates.
Many states report a higher graduation rate to the US government than
they post on state web sites. For example, California reports an 83 percent
graduation rate under the No Child Left Behind law, and a 67 percent rate on
a state web site. Some say that NCLB encourages drop-outs because school
administrators encourage low achievers to drop out so they do not pull down
test scores.
Ward Connerly, a black activist who championed the end of state and
local affirmative action programs in California and Michigan, announced
plans to hold referenda in five more states: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri,
Oklahoma and Nebraska. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights opposes
Connerly's efforts to end affirmative action programs, saying that such
programs promote "equal opportunity." Connerly counters that his "civil
rights initiatives" guarantee equal opportunity.
The US fertility rate rose to 2.1 in 2007. Some 4.3 million babies
were born, the most since 1961. The fertility rate for Hispanic women was
almost three, compared to 2.1 for Black women and almost 1.9 for white
women. Some demographers attributed the rise in fertility to the housing
boom, reasoning that an easier path to buy houses with no money down
increased births.
____________________________________________________
Nicholas Riccardi, "Arizona slams door on illegal immigrants," Los Angeles
Times, April 5, 2008.
Migration News. April 2008. Vol. 15. No 2.
http://migration.ucdavis.edu or Migration News. 2008. Congress: Debate,
Bush, Polls. April. Vol 15. No 2.
http://migration.ucdavis.edu
Editor: Philip Martin
Managing Editor: Cecily Sprouse
Department of Ag and Resource Economics
One Shields Ave
University of California, Davis
Davis CA 95616
Email:
migrant@primal.ucdavis.edu
Home Page:
http://migration.ucdavis.edu
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