Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Luis Figueroa, staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. (File photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

AUSTIN, April 21 – An attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said state lawmakers are trying to enact legislation that would allow the Department of Public Safety to deny driver’s licenses to legal residents.

House Bill 4675 by Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, would require applicants for driver’s licenses to furnish proof of citizenship or legal residency when applying. The bill and its companion, SB 1784 by Sen. John Corona, R-Dallas, would also permit the department to deny applicants who have less than one year remaining on their visas a license or photo ID. It would also require legal residents who are non-citizens to re-apply for a license annually, which would likely decrease the number of documents issued under the new policy.

Corona’s bill was voted out of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security Monday and Phillips’ bill is scheduled to go before the House Committee on State Affairs Tuesday.

The Department of Public Safety began enforcing the new rules in October without the laws in place. A lawsuit was subsequently filed against the department and its governing body, the Public Safety Commission, by attorneys for MALDEF on behalf of a landscaping company whose seasonal and legal employees were denied licenses they said were necessary for work.

Last week a state district judge granted a temporary injunction demanding DPS halt the practice, stating it acted without authority as only the state legislature can amend driver’s license policies. The injunction was stayed, however, due to a DPS appeal of the ruling.

MALDEF attorney Luis Figueroa said the proposed bills only mean that lawmakers are intent on passing legislation that would continue denying lawful residents and citizens a license.

“This legislation is aimed at giving DPS the authority to enact the rules that were defeated because they didn’t have the authority,” he said. “But what we have learned from the implementation of these rules is that they have created headaches for U.S. citizens, for lawful immigrants and for people here on visas. It’s preventing people from being able to do their jobs, who have gone through the process of coming in the right way through a formal process and now they can’t get a driver’s license.”

Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-San Benito, sits on the House Committee on State Affairs and said, in his opinion, the state should not be charged with enforcing federal immigration policies.

“It is the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor to oversee hiring practices, and the Department of Homeland Security to maintain security along the border,” he said.

Proponents of individual states doing more to secure the border and enforce immigration policies often argue that the federal government is failing in its duties to do just that. The same argument has been made as a reason to amend Texas laws but Lucio said he doesn’t see the need.

“I disagree (with the argument). I have a border wall running through my community,” he said. “The level of action that the federal government is taking, in my opinion, to secure our borders is adequate.”

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, said there are unintended consequences to be had when states are tasked with enforcing federal policy.

“For years we have said immigration is a federal issue. We can’t have 50 separate immigration frameworks,” he said. “Texas can’t have one immigration policy and New Mexico another, that’s why immigration was put in the federal constitution: it’s a federal issue.”

Shapleigh added that immigration-document policies are ever-changing, a factor which would negatively impact applicants under the proposed change.

“Immigration documents are fluid, they change daily, monthly weekly,” he said. “And, there is no data base who verifies who the non-citizen is in real time. Further, many DPS officers do not know what they are looking at when they are looking at an immigration document so that’s where the fear is, that the immigration document will not be one that accurately identifies the non-citizen coming in for the document.”

More conservative elements, however, see the need for states to closely monitor the impact undocumented immigrants have on states. One of the bills going before the same House committee on Tuesday is HB 276, by Rep. John Zerwas, R-Houston. The bill would require that state agencies keep records on the costs incurred by the state due to benefits and services undocumented immigrants receive.

A statement issued by the Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas, a conservative group who states its goal is to educate the public on the affects of immigration, explains that the cost to the state to provide services to undocumented immigrants is more than $5 billion annually.

“These numbers are worrying because they continue to show that the costs to Texas continue to rise, and represent a significant portion of the Texas budget,” said IRCOT director Rebecca Forest. “The cost of education alone now exceeds the entire federal dollars for education that Texas receives each year.”

The IRCOT, whose Web site also includes a section called “biblical mandates” for immigration reform, quotes Zerwas as saying that the “the best way to shed light on this problem and be able to make informed public policy decisions is to collect the data at the agency level and let the people of Texas know where their tax dollars are going.”

As of press time Tuesday evening, the House Committee on State Affairs had yet to entertain witnesses testifying for or against any of the proposed immigration-related bills.

Should the bills make it to the House and Senate floors for debate, however, Figueroa said their fate could be decided by how much attention is paid to their “unintended consequences.”

“Oklahoma enacted this (driver’s license) legislation and they just passed legislation last week to water it down,” he said. “It caused so many problems for citizens so it’s clear that this legislation doesn’t solve problems it just adds to more.”