The Connecticut city begins issuing ID cards July 24 to undocumented immigrants, a first in the US.
By Caitlin Carpenter, The Christian Science Monitor, 17 July 2007
At a time when a rising number of states and cities are cracking down on illegal immigrants, New Haven, Conn., is reaching out to them with a unique perk: an ID card.
Besides serving as identification for bank services and if police ask for ID, the card can be used at municipal locations such as libraries, beaches, and parks – and as a debit card for city parking meters and at 15 downtown shops.
Cities – and critics – across the country are watching closely as New Haven prepares to hand out its first batch of cards July 24. The idea: integrate illegal immigrants into the community, protect them from crime that can happen because of a lack of documentation, and encourage them to be more willing to report crimes to police. Reaction to the first-of-a-kind program has been swift and sharp, illustrating the wide divide in US public opinion over the issue.
“We’re the only city nationwide to have this program, so it’s an opportunity we have to take to be a part of normal life in the community,” says Maria, an illegal immigrant living here, who plans to pick up her card when it’s available next week. She says illegal immigrants are targeted by muggers, who know they carry cash because they can’t get a bank account without an ID.
But New Haven’s move has also prompted protests.
Are they OUT OF THERE MINDS! If a US Citizen goes to another country they are only allowed access to visit and stay for a limited time and that is when it is done Legally. Visiting a country illegally and they find you they send your rear right back to the US immediately! If legally going to another country to work you are only permitted to work in their country after lots of paperwork for 1 month to maybe 3 and then you have to GO HOME back to the US. Because your taking away from their Country Citizens employment options. Illegally there to work and no one will hire you with out the legal papers because of a strict inforcement and penalties to the business if they do so they don’t. So YOU’VE GOT TO BE KINDING me that that the US allows this or that even a State any State would even consider this. Come on. US a free country look at the statistics of our work for legal US citizens and those US Citizens unemployed and can’t find work because to many businesses are hiring the illegals for a cheaper deal and defrauding the US of Social Security and Federal/State Taxes that we as US Citizens have to pay when we work because this is supposed to be the money we get when we retire and we all know how bad that isn’t happening for most now or our children. WHY? Because it is States like this and others that allow or do not inforce the LAWS against Illegals working or living in OUR COUNTRY! They wouldn’t allow us to do that in theirs. COME ON! Seriously, where do their priorities lie it appears not for US LEGAL CITIZENS. After 9/11 and I was there only blocks away living in NY with a 4 mo. old watching from another roof top and lost my friends die because the US allows to much freedom to those who are not legal citizens and are not born US. Tell me you would get those rights in one of their countries. Come to America and get Free $$$$, a car, home and work legal or not. While the rest of us born raised and will spend the rest of our lives living and struggling to afford these things and achieve have to start from scratch and struggle to get the American Dream! They have it handed to them! WHAT??????
Makes me MAD! Infuriated. I am a single mom nothing is handed to me on silver platter.
No wonder crime is so rampant in this country when the Government does not follow its own laws. Illegal immigrants are breaking the law. The government is spitting in the faces of the LEGAL IMMIGRANTS. I think someone should inform the Government of the definition of LEGAL vs ILLEGAL. It is time ALL legal citizens, whether immigrants or natural born citizens ,write to ALL of the elected officials and demand that they follow the laws they had passed several years ago and deport the illegal immigrants. There is no LEGAL reason why Spanish gives you preferential treatment in getting jobs or welfare. Spanish also should NEVER be used as a prerequisit to getting a job. I am a legal immigrant, I learned this language, I worked hard to get where I am and this is the way it should be in this country. Please, all of you, write to your elected officials constantly. It is time they listened to the majority and if they don’t, make sure you DO NOT VOTE FOR THEM AGAIN. Find out what their voting record is and go accordingly, not by what they are telling you because at election time they only tell you what you want to hear and when elected they will do what they want. Time to make sure they know that it is BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, not BY WHATEVER I WANT TO DO.
Fire and brimstone and rhetoric, oh my. Are you spammers or here to talk?
I’m not available for conversation until tomorrow as I’m trying to catch a few winks before my next 12 hour shift. Chasing the dream and all that.
Have either of you read Resistance to Civil Government by Henry David Thoreau? After reading your messages I couldn’t get to sleep without revisiting it.
A quote:
“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. . . . But when . . . oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army. “
Mexico then, Iraq today. Tax revolt now!