Concerns about security and identity fraud have resurfaced in the emotional debate over giving undocumented migrant workers the right to drive in Vermont.
Col. Tom L’Esperance, the chief of the Vermont State Police, is worried that “driving privilege cards” the state would issue under the new legislation could be a vehicle for fraud.
“I do have concerns about the potential for fraud, for identity fraud, identity theft,” L’Esperance told the House Transportation Committee last week.
L’Esperance said imminent federal immigration reform could result in a significant increase in undocumented immigrants in Vermont, from about 3,000 to 5,000 now, to a potential of 10,000 as people seek to exploit amnesty laws.
“That surge I am concerned about,” said L’Esperance. “We have maybe 3,000 to 5,000 illegal immigrants in the state right now. Will that surge to 10,000? And how will we address that when they go for licenses and things like that?”
L’Esperance said his worry isn’t directed solely at undocumented dairy farm workers, largely from Mexico and Guatemala, but to all immigrants without documentation.
Although L’Esperance said that “driving privilege” cards for migrant workers would be a major help to police in the investigation of crimes, he stopped short of endorsing the cards from a public safety perspective, saying he didn’t feel “comfortable” to judge.
Some lawmakers on the committee were skeptical of L’Esperance’s concerns, pointing out that it’s unclear how much driver’s license fraud now occurs in Vermont.
While emphasizing that his comments don’t intend to target “hard-working farm workers,” L’Esperance said that this new driving privilege card could be the first step toward establishing a identity, even for those who bear “ill will towards the United States.”
Brendan O’Neill, a spokesman for Migrant Justice, said the police chief’s concerns are ill-founded. He said they wrongly attempted to single out the driver privilege licenses as more susceptible to abuse by criminals and fraudsters.
“There’s fraud in any program,” said O’Neill. “I don’t see how providing access to driver’s licenses or privilege cards to this community would disproportionately change the fraud that we’d see in any given community. So I just don’t buy it.”
Under the legislation, two of three forms of documentation – a passport, a consulate-issued ID card, and birth or marriage certificates – are required for the DMV to issue a driving privilege card.
While O’Neill defends the integrity of that ID card, L’Esperance is more skeptical about the rigor of the vetting for those receiving such ID cards.
There’s also talk of fingerprinting migrant workers for Vermont’s driving privilege cards, a requirement which typical Vermont residents and drivers do not face. O’Neill blasts this idea as “outright discriminatory,” and “laden with assumptions about the people who would need to access this program.”
“It defeats and undermines the whole intention of the bill, because it would create fear and obstacles and barriers,” O’Neill told VTDigger.
These objections to the legislation, which were reviewed at length by a summer study committee who voted 8-1 to legalize driving licenses, come as some farmers made comments last week which O’Neill described as “offensive,” as VPR reported at the time.
Meanwhile, there could also be an imminent amendment, to be tabled shortly, which restricts this driving privilege card to agricultural workers only. The point is to minimize the legislation’s unintended consequences, to prevent those who aren’t dairy farm workers from obtaining this alternative license.
Attorney Erin Jacobsen, from the nonprofit Vermont Immigration and Asylum Advocates, which legally represents poor immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, testified on Tuesday against that course of action.
She said about 30 to 50 of her clients annually, who aren’t dairy farm workers, lack driving rights, because they don’t have the right to work in the country due to their uncertain or pending immigration status.
Her clients include victims of domestic abuse and other violence, whose daily lives suffer from the fact that they can’t drive legally.
The legislation could be voted out of committee by the end of the week, where it’ll pass to House Ways and Means, which must review its fee provisions. It could be taken up on the House floor early next week.
