Cydney DeModica, an MVD spokeswoman, would not comment on the specifics of Montoya's cases, but said, "It's not our list [of documents]. The law provides us the list that MVD has to go by in order to issue licenses. It's very difficult to have MVD employees put in a position where they're trying to communicate with people who may not have the documents."
Of course, the Motor Vehicle Division wouldn't be put in such a tough position if the proof-of-residency law didn't exist.
Paolo Vescia
Sí Se Puede founder Alberto Esparza believes most undocumented immigrants would pay for car insurance if they could get licenses.
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"It's what's making them crack down on people," Montoya says. "It's just a dumb law. It's not only a dumb law, it's a dangerous law, because if, in fact, the state doesn't agree to stop doing this, we aregoing to have to sue the state of Arizona. That's going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money."
Joe Eddie Lopez never had particularly strong feelings about the driver's license issue until three years ago. When the 1996 law came up for a vote in the Legislature, he opposed it, but he knew it was going to pass anyway. And he really didn't know what kind of effect it would have.He says all that changed in 1997, when he started receiving a string of very similar e-mails and letters, with complaints that he'd never heard before.
Two families from Lopez's neighborhood wrote that they'd been involved in car accidents with undocumented immigrants, and that the immigrants had fled the scene. A woman in Glendale told him that she'd been involved in three separate accidents with uninsured drivers she believed to be undocumented immigrants. In each case, they'd left their cars in the street and run away.
Not long after he began hearing such reports, Lopez's own daughter, Debbie, was hit while driving in central Phoenix. The driver of the other car immediately raced from the scene, leaving her to deal with the cost of the accident. Lopez heard through the neighborhood grapevine that the passengers in the other car had been illegal aliens.
"Of course, we had to pay the deductible and got an insurance increase along with it," he says. "And the other families did as well. After that, I made some announcements at public meetings and found that there were similar experiences out there. So I decided to do something about it."
The 60-year-old Lopez is a political realist, and he recognizes the uphill battle involved in trying to win statewide support for a bill that would seemingly sanction illegal immigration. That's why he's quick to emphasize that he's not involved in the issue out of sympathy for the immigrant population, but because he believes that American citizens and legal residents are the primary victims of the current law.
"Prior to this law taking effect in 1996, one seldom heard of a problem where someone had an accident and somebody took off," Lopez says.
"The reason is that the vast majority of people had insurance," he adds, though acknowledging that no conclusive data supports this view.
"The talk-show people are talking it up as if I was intending to just start handing out driver's licenses to anybody that requested it, as if they didn't have to pass a test and everything else," he says. "That's one stupid thing about it. As it is, people get a fraudulent license, and then everybody can drive, whether they've passed a test and know the rules or not."
Most states don't require proof of residency to get a driver's license. Arizona is one of only six states that have such a law (the most recent convert, Texas, enacted its proof-of-residency requirement a year ago through state Department of Public Safety rules, without open debate or advance public notice).
California's has been in place for seven years, nearly twice as long as Arizona's. It has been the blueprint Arizona has followed on this issue.
Many of the same complaints voiced by Arizona's Hispanic community have been aired in California. But the problem has reached even further -- into California's multinational business community. Scott Keane, a California attorney who has worked to repeal the law on behalf of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce of Northern California, says the state's driver's license law is the biggest source of irritation among Japanese businessmen who spend time in California.
He says Japanese multinational companies send CEOs and other business leaders to the U.S. on a rotation basis, and that they've had to renew their provisional driving permits every time their temporary visas get extended. He describes their treatment by California motor vehicle employees as "pure harassment that's resulted in complete chaos."
Keane says the law has cost California up to $7 million in processing expenses. He adds that the law has not achieved its stated purpose, because eligibility for social services in California -- as in Arizona -- is not tied to a driver's license.
"It's insane to try to regulate social services through a driver's license law," Keane says. "If you care about victims, and you care about being competitive in the global marketplace, don't follow California's example."
Keane says he doesn't think a similar law would pass the California Assembly today, "but repealing it once it's on the books is hard."
