PUBLIC SUBMISSION | As of: February 14, 2009 Tracking No. 8023779f Comments Due: May 08, 2007 |
Docket: DHS-2006-0030
Minimum Standards for Driver's Licenses and Identification Cards Acceptable to Federal Agencies for Official Purposes
Comment On: DHS-2006-0030-0001
Minimum Standards for Drivers Licenses and Identification Cards Acceptable by Federal Agencies for Official Purposes
Document: DHS-2006-0030-4372
Comment Submitted By Paul Graham
Department of Homeland Security
Attn: NAC 1-12037
Washington, DC 20538
Re: DHS Docket No. 2006-0030, Minimum Standards for Driver's Licenses and
Identification Cards Acceptable by Federal Agencies for Official Purposes
Dear Sir or Madam:
I am writing to comment on the proposed rulemaking of the Department of
Homeland Security published at 72 Fed. Reg. 10820, et. seq., regarding minimum
standards for State-issued driver's licenses and identification cards in accordance
with the REAL ID Act of 2005. I have some concerns regarding the content of the
Proposed Rules and some underlying assumptions upon which they are based.
As an over-arching concern, I believe that the Proposed Rule, like the REAL ID
Act itself, grossly oversimplifies a tremendously complex immigration system.
The list of documents that will be acceptable to establish one's non-citizen
immigration status is incomprehensibly short. The only documents included are
an I-551, EAD, and foreign passport and affixed US visa.
This list excludes a large number of categories of persons who are lawfully
present in the U.S. To name just a few, the Proposed Rule would render ineligible
for a driver's license a large percentage of the following: Canadians except those
few with an EAD or Green Card, applicants for change or extension of status,
asylum-seekers and asylees and refugees, conditional permanent residents, and
those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Derivatives are also impacted by
these restrictions.
The emphasis on possession of a current EAD is similarly misplaced. Almost all
non-immigrants that are authorized and required to work incident to status are
granted an automatic extension of work authorization by operation of law, as long
as a timely application for extension of status has been filed. Consistent with the
extensive delays associated with USCIS adjudications, such work authorization is
automatically extended for up to 240 days. This restriction, then, imperils the
eligibility for a REAL ID driver's license for a large percentage of many non-
immigrant categories, including E, H, J, L, O, P, Q, R, and TN.
The Proposed Rule utterly fails to contemplate the wide (and, to the untrained,
confusing) array of documents issued by USCIS, the State Department, and other
federal agencies as evidence of these and other lawful classifications. Over and
above the miniscule list of acceptable documents provided by the Proposed Rule,
evidence of lawful status includes visa stamps, laminated cards, unlaminated
handwritten cards, forms, letters, court orders, and others. While this is a messy
and confusing list, the Proposed Rule must not exclude any documents which
legitimately demonstrate one's eligibility for a driver's license under REAL ID.
The Proposed Rule's requirement that acceptable documents be unexpired again
ignores both the law and the practice of immigration. For instance, many
nonimmigrants remain in lawful status long after their foreign passport and/or US
visa expire. The same principle holds true for LPRs. Green cards frequently expire
but it undisputed in the law that LPR status survives the expiration of a green
card. The expiration simply denotes the expiration of evidence of the status, not of
the LPR status itself. This provision will adversely impact thousands upon
thousands of eligible persons.
The reliance that the Proposed Rule places on SAVE for verification of immigration
status is a recipe for disaster. The SAVE system is notorious for the entry of
inaccurate or incomplete information. Those errors that are discovered require time-
consuming manual corrections. Very frequently, clients of my office who are
admitted in work authorized statuses must wait extended periods for an SSN and
face denials because of the inability of the SAVE system to verify status.
The Proposed Rule provides that a temporary REAL ID License will be valid only
for the duration of admission or, if there is no fixed end date, for one-year. Even
assuming these individuals can present an unexpired visa or EAD (which many
cannot), this will work an extreme hardship on many classes of persons who are
in lawful status for extended periods of time. For instance, many F and J
nonimmigrants are admitted and lawfully present for the "duration of status" (i.e.
D/S) to participate in courses of study and programs that can last up to seven
years and more. These individuals and many others in similar circumstances will
be required to undertake the time-consuming process of license renewal on an
annual basis and, in addition, pay yet-unknown annual renewal fees.
I urge you to revise the Proposed Rules to address the above concerns.
Sincerely,
Nathan Graham, esq.