Council Watch: Out of the Shadows
As the initial step of a legislative program that seeks to expand the vote to noncitizens residing in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito are fast-tracking a bill to establish a municipal ID card that will be available to all residents of the city, regardless of their legal status in the United States.
Advocates for the bill, Intro 253, contend that a great many people in the five boroughs are living in the proverbial “shadows” because they lack official forms of identification. Sonia Medrano of New York Communities for Change (the successor organization to ACORN) avers, “For too long, hardworking people who have deep ties to our neighborhoods and communities have not been able to prove their identity, let alone have access to basic and critical services.” The municipal ID card will cure this defect by allowing freer access to official identification.
However, it is a curious feature of the law that, in order to prevent fraud, one must present identification in order to obtain the proposed ID card. In fact, the list of forms of identification that must be presented, in some combination yet to be determined, is so extensive that it begs the question of why anyone who already possesses “a U.S. or foreign passport; a U.S. driver’s license; a U.S. state identification card; a U.S. permanent resident card; a consular identification card; a photo identification card with name, address, date of birth, and expiration date issued by another country to its citizens or nationals as an alternative to a passport for re-entry to the issuing country; a certified copy of U.S. or foreign birth certificate; a Social Security card; a national identification card with photo, name, address, date of birth, and expiration date; a foreign driver’s license; a U.S. or foreign military identification card; a current visa issued by a government agency; a U.S. Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) authorization letter; an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card; or any other documentation that the mayor’s office of operations deems acceptable” would require a municipal identification card.
Actual numbers of how many people in New York City have no source of identification are hard to come by. The Brennan Center at NYU conducted an oft-cited survey in 2006 that concluded that as much as 11 percent of the voting-age citizen population of the United States lacks “unexpired” government-issued identification. However, a 2008 study by American University’s Center for Democracy and Election Management, which used a broader sample, found radically lower numbers of citizens without photo ID: In Indiana, for example, only 0.3 percent of registered voters did not possess photo identification. The Brennan Center’s metric based on unexpired driver’s licenses skews its findings by not accounting, for instance, for nondrivers or people who have neglected to renew their license in time: Most states, after all, offer generous grace periods before licenses become invalid.
The push for municipal identification cards has centered on places such as New Haven, Oakland and Los Angeles that have very high immigrant populations, including many “undocumented” people who do not have legally valid forms of identification. This lack, according to Councilman Carlos Menchaca, co– prime sponsor of the bill, impacts the ability of city residents to enter school buildings, apply for jobs or obtain banking services. Menchaca says of the proposed municipal ID: “This is a card for every New Yorker: seniors, LGBT people, nondrivers like me who ride bikes. We are having conversations to build out the cool factor; we want to take everyone into consideration.” Cool factor aside, it is hard to imagine why the vast majority of New Yorkers who already have state-issued IDs would want to get a card that is clearly intended as documentation for the underdocumented.
The question of entry to schools comes up frequently—although in response to a query to the Department of Education, spokeswoman Marge Feinberg insisted that possession of identification to visit a school is not mandatory, contrary to received opinion. “You may be under the idea that parents need to show identification to visit their children in school,” says Feinberg. “The principal knows the parents, so all that is required is to sign in at the security desk, and then they call the principal’s office to let them know a parent would like to visit.”
As for applying to jobs, it is unclear that municipal identification would make much difference to people looking for work. According to federal law, prospective employees must present proof of identity and authorization to work; a municipal or even state-issued ID card is not sufficient. It may be the case that there are a lot of job seekers who have proof of work authorization such as a birth certificate, a Social Security card, a Native American tribal document, etc., but who lack photo ID; however, for those people, getting a New York State nondriving ID card through the Department of Motor Vehicles costs $10, with substantial discounts for people over 62 or on disability.
Someone who is ineligible to work in the United States will not become eligible once they possess a municipal ID card. An “undocumented” individual looking for a job will either have to find an employer who is willing to violate federal law and hire them off the books, or use the identity of an eligible person—which, of course, constitutes identity fraud.
Access to banking is another presumed problem that advocates aim to solve through the introduction of municipal ID cards: Immigrants tend to have higher rates among the “unbanked,” and illegal immigrants are higher still. However, banks currently allow anyone with a Taxpayer Identification Number to open a bank account, and the IRS will issue an ITIN to anyone upon request.
A key feature of the proposed law broadens its applicability to another population that is reputedly underserved by the current system. Transgender people, according to their advocates, are burdened by an unfair and onerous system that requires them to get a letter from a doctor or psychologist before the DMV will allow them to change their designated gender on their state-issued ID cards. Municipal ID cards would allow applicants to self-designate their gender without getting a note from a professional, a freedom that may be estimable for the few thousand New Yorkers it would impact, but one wonders why it would be necessary to institute a citywide program solely to address it.
It is not too much of a stretch to conclude that the real reason behind the introduction of the ID bill is to lay the groundwork for the introduction of noncitizen voting. Last year Councilman Daniel Dromm, the other co–prime sponsor of Intro 253, introduced a bill to allow all city residents to vote in municipal elections. The bill, which the mayor has nominally opposed, has not yet been reintroduced, though Dromm’s office confirmed that it is on deck.
Menchaca acknowledged that there is a “network of opportunity” between the municipal ID bill, the expanded practice of participatory budgeting and the ultimate introduction of noncitizen voting. “We want to have a conversation about access to power and representation,” said the councilman.
Noncitizen voting in city elections, as detailed in City & State last fall, would have the effect of massively and suddenly shifting the demographics of voting in a number of electoral districts—frequently, though not always, in the favor of incumbents. Resident ID cards, in this light, are a stealthy maneuver to get future voters lined up and registered in preparation for noncitizen voting. Otherwise, what is the point of issuing these pointless documents?