Workers Deserve Licenses
By Kim Brettschneider
Contributing Writer

The California State Driver’s License bill, SB-60, would have provided immigrant workers with the right to drive with a license and to obtain car insurance in California. It was passed under Governor Gray Davis right before the recall election, but was recently repealed by now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. SB-60 would have allowed immigrants to obtain a license and insurance, with the qualification that they provide tax reports, foreign driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and tax certificates. Since there was no strict background check on citizen status, this constituted an admission from the U.S. that we need these immigrant workers here and a commitment to offer the workers rights to a driver’s license.

The influx of immigrants, and the resulting restructuring of their communities in Los Angeles, is the result of NAFTA. As Leland Saito points out in the book In the Barrios, L.A. “has been revitalized by the centralization, concentration, and internationalization of industrial and finance capital that has marked the contemporary restructuring of the world economy.” The markets undergoing expansion and providing new jobs usually offer “low wage, part-time work that takes advantage of the availability of cheap immigrant labor... The loss of unionized manufactured jobs that offered a livable wage and benefits, is a major reason for the ‘widening divide’ of increasing income inequality and poverty” in L.A. NAFTA has made the restructuring of communities inevitable. The incredible contradiction of free trade is that it allows the U.S. to go to foreign countries to exploit workers in factories for large corporations, but does not allow for foreign citizens to come and work in this country. When individuals migrate to the U.S. for work they are often called “illegal aliens” and criminals, even though they often come from towns dominated by U.S. factories. People consider these workers criminals because they send home money earned here, remittances, to their families. Abel Valenzuela discovered through research at UCLA that in 1998, day laborers sent remittances an average of seven times that year, averaging 2,630 dollars in total. These men and women, struggling to support their families hundreds of miles away, deserve human rights as much as any U.S. citizens working here.

Working conditions in the U.S. are no better for immigrant workers than in the countries they left. When people come to the U.S. to support their family, without documents, they give up many of their fundamental human rights, including the right to police protection and freedom from police interrogation. They risk deportation even when reporting crime, as immigrant rights scholars Chichilla, Hamilton, and Loucky note:“Police-INS collaboration... discourages the undocumented from reporting crime.” In addition to police protection, immigrants also deserve the right to be free from interrogation. During the 1992 LA riots, Police Chief Gates “publicly blamed ‘illegal aliens’ for much of the pillage.” As a result, “400 Border Patrol agents (an armed agency of the INS) patrolled Latino neighborhoods.” The original estimate of “one-third of those arrested being undocumented immigrants were eventually dropped to 10 percent.” The INS allows immigrants to enter illegally, but kick them out during economic despair or chaos, when it is shown that anti-immigration feelings increase.

Most Californians do not give consideration to the immigrants who pick their fruit and build the infrastructures of California. The driver’s license bill, SB-60, recognized immigrants for the work they do by providing them the right to drive and carry government identification. Workers at the Pomona Day Labor Center (PDLC) have been fighting to achieve this bill for six years. The PDLC, a non-profit organization, opened in 1998 in response to an ordinance passed by the City of Pomona making it illegal to loiter on the street and solicit work. Day laborers find the center a safe place to obtain work, and they appreciate the new standards for labor practices that are incorporated into the philosophy of the center. About 70-100 men, ranging from 18 to 76 years old, regularly utilize the center. About 90 percent of them are from Mexico. The center is staffed by two full-time employees and about 30 volunteers, including students from Pitzer Professor of Sociology Jose Calderon’s “Restructuring Communities” class.

Immigrants at the center experience inequalities on a daily basis that result from anti-immigrant sentiments and a lack of information on the part of California citizens. Recently, a fear of terrorism has escalated anti-immigrant feelings. Opponents of SB-60 have presented it as a facilitator of entry and mobility for terrorists. Migrant workers are here to work and to earn money. Karen Hamilton, Urban Fellow at the Center for California Cultural and Social Issues, says she is tired of “excuses such as ‘national security,’ as if [Shwarzenegger] should dare to draw a link between immigrants and terrorists. Day laborers come here to support their families and should be afforded the same basic human rights as the rest of the U.S.” One day laborer discussed the anti-immigrant sentiment in a meeting: “The anti-immigrant fervor that’s out there in California today is a contradiction, because some days 45 bosses come to pick us up - we don’t have the rights of citizens, we don’t have our residency, but they need our work.”

The SB-60 was not seen by day laborers as a privilege but as a necessity to get a permanent job. The new version of the bill (soon to be written) will require background checks, which will prevent undocumented workers from getting a license. Churches, community groups, and non-profits like CARECEN, a Salvadorian rights advocacy agency provide services and, most importantly, a voice to immigrants.

Abigail Machson-Carter, a Pomona senior doing her thesis on the PDLC, says: “It’s a human rights issue because in California, having a car means access to basic needs that everyone deserves: finding work, visiting family or safety in emergencies.”

Hamilton also believes that “It’s unfortunate that we will allow immigrants to break their backs for our state in the most difficult jobs with the worst working conditions, but we will not grant them the small privilege of having a driver’s license in order to safely arrive at their jobs.” Undocumented workers can ride bikes or walk; but often the jobs offered are too far or remote without a car, and public transportation does not go where they need, or their tools do not fit on the bus. Some drive anyway. This is an issue of safety for other California drivers, since the undocumented workers have not passed the California driver’s test and cannot get insurance.

When asked, “Is it worth the risk to drive without a license?” one worker responded: “Here they can arrest you for driving without a light... they can just get you for driving like that. Or even without a reason, they will stop you anyway, they ask to see your license and insurance and if you don’t have it they take your I.D. and your car, and you are left walking. Better not to drive at all - a simple ticket can be $1,500.”

Clearly immigrants need daily work and deserve human rights, including the right to have a driver’s license. Show your support and join Day Laborers and 5-C students in the Pilgrimage for Human Rights. The march started Thursday Dec. 4, but more marchers are needed at any point along the way. Each day, the participants will stop at different churches for the night. On Sunday, Dec. 7, a rally at 312 N. Spring Street will commence the march. On Saturday morning at 8am, you can meet up with marchers at Our Lady of Guadalupe 11359 Coffield Ave. in El Monte. For more info contact Kim at KLB02000@pomona.edu.