The Times of Northwest Indiana

Letter worries area immigrants

December 13, 2007

A recent letter from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles to 206,000 Hoosiers has a number of immigrants in Clinton County worried.

The letter notifies addressees that information on their drivers' licenses doesn't match information in the Social Security Administration's database. Consequently, recipients' drivers licenses will be revoked if the errors are not corrected by Jan. 31.

A group of about 15 Hispanic immigrants spoke to The Times Wednesday about the letter. They anticipate that, once the deadline passes, they will lose their licenses.

Every one of them received the letters, they said, leaving them to wonder how they will get to work, take their kids to school or go to the doctor's office.

"It's going to affect Wal-Mart and Aldi's," said one man, "because we won't be leaving our homes."

Others said they expect insurance companies will suffer, because without a license, they won't need car insurance.

"We'll go to work. We'll come home. Nothing more," said another woman.

Some have talked about carpooling to work, while others question the lack of a public transportation system in Frankfort.

"It's going to affect me in every single way," one woman said.

Clinton County Sheriff Mark Mitchell says the sweep couldn't have come soon enough.

"This type of enforcement and acknowledgment by the BMV is long overdue," Mitchell said.

Driving without a license is a C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail with up to $500 in fines.

"It's an immediate jailable offense," Mitchell said.

Mitchell was among community leaders who met with local license branch officials about a month ago to discuss the problem of false documents that is plaguing the county.

As record keepers, local BMV employees don't have the authority to confiscate erroneous documents, Mitchell said.

"They have zero authority to hold those people there," he said.

At best, the local branch employees can report what they see to law enforcement, who can then try to track the document holder.

"I think the letter is touching a nerve," said Purdue professor Jay McCann, who has studied the effects of immigration on Clinton County. "It could create a potential polarizing debate in Frankfort."

McCann recently conducted a survey which showed 79 percent of the Hispanic immigrants in North Central Indiana questioned had access to their own vehicles. Of those, 88 percent work outside the home, which, McCann says, implies a serious demand for transportation.

But regardless of how immigrants are affected by the BMV's request, the agency is simply doing its job, BMV communications director Dennis Rosebrough told The Times Tuesday.

"We needed to catch up and start with a clean state," Rosebrough said. "All of it has to do with security of people's personal identification."

The letters were written after the state BMV updated its records, Rosebrough said. The agency compared its 6.5 million records to those held by the Social Security Administration and found that 3 percent - 206,000 - did not match up.

"If you look at the BMV database, there is no field in any of the data records that have to do with race or ethnicity. It's just not a card in our deck," Rosebrough said. "We are not an enforcement agency. We are a records keeper."

Of the records sweep, Rosebrough said maintaining accuracy is crucial because driver's licenses are such broadly accepted forms of identification.

As of late last week, not quite 20 percent of letter recipients had resolved their issues, he said.

"The great, great majority of mismatches were what we would call inadvertent, innocent mistakes," Rosebrough said.

For example, mistakes could be the result of transposed digits in a Social Security number or an unreported name change due to a marriage, he said.

As of Nov. 7, new licenses are automatically compared to information in the Social Security's database, with results returned within six seconds.

Errors can be corrected online, by sending a form in the mail, or by visiting a license branch.

The sweep marked the first time the state's BMV has aligned its information with that of Social Security.

Indiana is the 48th state to work with Social Security in that capacity, Rosebrough said.