Thread: Mass expiration of driver’s certificates has immigrant ..

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index ... s_id=53615

Mass expiration of driver’s certificates has immigrant community on edge as 287(g) approaches
By Jared Allen, jallen@nashvillecitypaper.com
December 11, 2006

A perfect storm of fear is brewing among Nashville’s immigrant community.

Immigrant advocates say that large numbers of Hispanic immigrants – already suspicious of a plan to enforce immigration violations locally – are becoming increasingly nervous knowing that, in a matter of months, the last of the thousands of driving certificates issued to undocumented immigrants living in Middle Tennessee will expire.

Beginning in July 2004, the Department of Safety began issuing driving certificates to anyone who could prove their residence in the state – regardless of whether they were legal or illegal aliens.

The certificates were meant to improve driving safety by making sure immigrants living in the state knew traffic rules, and more than 50,000 driving certificates were issued state wide. More than a fifth of them were issued in Davidson County.

But the certificate program was suspended in March by the Bredesen administration in the face of security and fraud concerns.

Some of the certificates were tied to work or student visas, meaning they would expire when a person’s visa did, according to the Department of Safety.

But thousands of others – 80 percent of the total – were issued for one year to immigrants who showed no proof they were in the country legally.

The last of those certificates will expire in March 2007, Safety officials said.

And in Tennessee, driving without a license is a misdemeanor criminal offense.

For the majority of Nashvillians, such an offense would, in ordinary circumstances, amount to a slap on the wrist.

But it could spell big trouble for those illegal immigrants who were temporarily given the legal right to drive, but who now face the prospect of having a driving without a license charge trigger their immediate deportation under Sheriff Daron Hall’s plan to localize immigration enforcement.

“We’ve got a perfect storm brewing,” immigration attorney Yvette Sebelist said last week at Hall’s first Immigration Advisory Council meeting.

“The problem is that we gave these things to people, now they’re taken away,” Sebelist said Friday. “In a way, we’ve set them up to be criminals now.”

The criminalization of driving without a license is perhaps the single biggest fear of Nashville’s immigrant community as it awaits the implementation of Hall’s local immigration enforcement plan, called 287(g), said both Sebelist and local immigration attorney Elliott Ozment.

For that reason, Ozment, who along with Sebelist is a member of Hall’s Advisory Council, said he will propose that in adopting 287(g), the Sheriff’s Office limits its immigration inquiries to certain criminal offenses that rise to a certain level of risk to public safety.

Hall, though, said that is unrealistic.

“It’s not reasonable or realistic to not print or book people only on certain charges once they are issued a citation for anything,” the Sheriff said.

“It’s fair to debate what happens to [immigrants] after they are checked [for their immigration status], Hall continued. “But I don’t think it’s negotiable who is checked. And the reason is I didn’t decide who was arrested and who was issued a citation.”

Hall, though, said he would continue to work with the Advisory Council and discuss which flagged illegal immigrants are detained and which are released with a notice to appear before a federal immigration judge.

And the Sheriff is aware that, as of now, the driver’s license issue is fueling Nashville’s Latino community’s skepticism of his immigration plan, but Hall maintains that his duty to protect the public supercedes all else.

“If you want to decriminalize the driver’s license issue, that’s a fair conversation that someone in the Legislature probably needs to have,” Hall said.

Sebelist, though, said it is something that the Sheriff himself needs to consider.

“If the goal [of 287(g)] is public safety,” she said, “we’re not going to be safer if we’ve got people driving around with no licenses and no insurance just because they’ve had to make the choice to continue to drive and are afraid of what will happen to them if they’re stopped for a broken tail light.”

“The problem is that we gave these things to people, now they’re taken away,” Sebelist said Friday. “In a way, we’ve set them up to be criminals now.”

I cannot believe an attorney is saying this. If I ever really need
one, I'm going to be scared to death.

dem4labor wrote:

Quote:
“The problem is that we gave these things to people, now they’re taken away,” Sebelist said Friday. “In a way, we’ve set them up to be criminals now.”


I cannot believe an attorney is saying this. If I ever really need
one, I'm going to be scared to death.

I think this just lawyer double speak. They were going to drive anyway with or without a license. The license just gives them the ability to open bank accounts etc.

Duplicate so this post is still open at:
http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... ic&t=48423