At a community meeting Thursday night in Bell, DMV officials listen to testimony on driver's licenses for immigrants without legal status. Immigrants can apply for the new licenses beginning Jan. 1, 2015, but some lack official documents proving who they are or where they live. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / February 13, 2014)
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As the California Department of Motor Vehicles prepares for a historic expansion of driving privileges, some immigrants may be left out because they lack documents proving who they are or where they live.
The DMV is hiring about 1,000 workers and opening five temporary offices to handle a flood of driver’s license applications beginning Jan. 1, 2015, from immigrants without legal status. In a few months, the agency will issue regulations on the documents required to obtain the new license.
According to a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last October, the immigrant driver’s licenses will contain a distinguishing mark but will otherwise resemble regular licenses. The applicants may include people from rural villages who never obtained birth certificates as well as day laborers with no fixed address to prove California residency.
At a meeting with DMV officials Thursday night in Bell that drew hundreds of potential applicants, many speakers asked the agency to accept church records, school IDs and other non-government documents.
“A lot of day laborers have lost all their personal identification,” said Ana Garcia of the Central American Resource Center. “We provide worker center IDs, and that’s all they have. They don’t have a permanent home.”
Moises Alfaro, a day laborer in the San Fernando Valley, said many of his coworkers do not have an ITIN – an identification number used to pay taxes – because jobs have been scarce. An income tax return is listed in the driver’s license law as an accepted document, along with official IDs such as a passport. The new DMV regulations may expand on the options mentioned in the law.
“I also drive and I would like a license, like all of us,” Alfaro said. “For all of us, it would be an improvement to get a car.”
Some immigrants do not have birth certificates because their births were never registered in their home countries. They are then unable to obtain official documents such as a passport or the matricula consular used as identification by many Mexican immigrants.
Over 40% of births in the developing world are unregistered, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. The figure may be as high as 60% in some Mexican states.
