Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) is organizing a rally on Saturday, March 5th at noon in Queens “to protest attacks on immigrant communities and to demand that Governor Pataki and other political representatives recognize all immigrantsâ right to a driverâs license.” This according to their press release:
The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles initiated plans last year that would result in the suspension of nearly 300,000 immigrantsâ driverâs licenses and inappropriately use the DMV as an immigration agency. Over 40 organizations, mostly based in Queens and many belonging to the New York Coalition for Immigrantsâ Rights to Driverâs Licenses, have come together to form the Queens Driversâ License Coalition and will march in opposition to this policy. They are demanding that the right to drive be recognized as an immigrant worker rights issue, that all drivers be granted one license (no separate driving permits for immigrants), that DMV not act as immigration enforcement, and that Governor Pataki and other elected officials stop pushing immigrant workers underground.
Obviously this issue is of great importance to the South Asian community, many of who make their living as drivers:
Moni Alam, a Bangladeshi mother of two and family organizer at DRUM, expresses, âMy husband, who is also a target of Special Registration, is very worried that his driverâs license will be taken away and that the DMV will help the Department of Homeland Security to deport him. He drives a taxi six days a week and if he can’t do his work, our family will have no income and we’ll be pushed further underground. I want to ask Governor Pataki and the DMV, âHow will we survive?ââ
To understand what is being protested it helps to know the background a bit. Civil Rights.org reports:
A judge ordered yesterday [Feb 18th, 2005] that the state stop taking away the driver’s licenses of immigrants in New York who do not have Social Security cards, saying that the Department of Motor Vehicles is not authorized to enforce immigration law or to make new rules without public notice.
The department began a license crackdown last year that was expected to result in the loss of driving privileges for as many as 300,000 immigrants in New York State this year and has already led to the suspension of about 7,000 licenses.
The order by Justice Karen S. Smith of State Supreme Court in Manhattan was temporary, but lawyers on both sides said it reflected her preliminary opinion that immigrant drivers would suffer irreparable harm unless the crackdown was stopped while the court considers a class-action lawsuit brought on their behalf, and that the immigrants’ suit was likely to prevail.
It was filed last summer against Gov. George E. Pataki and Raymond Martinez, the motor vehicles commissioner, by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. It was brought on behalf of New Yorkers who have been denied a driver’s license or identity card for lack of a verifiable Social Security number or an immigration document satisfactory to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The conservative New York Post’s Op-Ed section weighs in on Pataki’s appeal of the decision:
Kudos to the Pataki administration for moving swiftly to appeal a judge’s ill-advised decision barring the state Department of Motor Vehicles from cracking down on driver’s-license fraud. At least someone in New York seems to have heard of 9/11 â unlike Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Karen Smith.
She issued a temporary restraining order against the DMV crackdown, first announced last August, on license issues to people who can’t prove they’re in the United States legally.
