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Mexican ID can’t ensure alien safety, U.S. security
By Emerald editorial board

February 15, 2006

Members of Oregonians For Immigration Reform gathered Saturday on campus at the High School Equivalency Program building to protest illegal immigration. Their target: the Mexican consulate issuing matricula consulars — identification cards given to Mexican citizens who can provide a birth certificate, photo ID and proof of residency. The cards allow Mexicans, including illegal immigrants, to obtain driver’s licenses and open bank accounts in the United States.

The protest drew a group of counter-protesters, and Department of Public Safety officers were on hand to keep the peace.

At $27 each, the cards may be cheaper than passports for Mexican travelers. But the OFIR

protesters and their sympathizers have a point: They assert that because legal immigrants from Mexico and other countries obtain Green Cards or other documents, only illegal immigrants need such cards.

The use of the cards has grown from 528,000 to more than 4.7 million last year, according to a Sept. 27 article in the Los Angeles Times. The Mexican Consulate sold about 24,000 cards in Oregon in 2004, according to a Dec. 4 article in The Oregonian.

As many as 7 million illegal immigrants — including 4.8 million Mexicans — lived in the United States in January 2000, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service data.

Issuing these cards raises questions about whether our federal and state governments are handling immigration properly. As stated in the Los Angeles Times article, the matricula consular issue “highlights the contradiction between immigration laws, which forbid the presence of undocumented workers, and immigration reality, which encourages them to spend their paychecks here.â€