A plan to provide undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, Calif., with city-issued identification cards is one step closer to being a reality in the City of Angels.
A City Council committee Tuesday unanimously approved the plan-proposed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa-by a 3-0 vote, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
With the blessing of the Arts, Parks, Health and Aging Committee, the plan will now go before the 15-member City Council for approval. If passed, the Times reports, Los Angeles would become the largest city in the nation to offer city identification cards to illegal immigrants.
Under Villaraigosa's plan, the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month, Los Angeles would create a city photo ID program that would issue photo identification cards to immigrant Los Angelenos, with also double as prepaid ATM cards. The card would allow immigrants to access banking services, among other services.
City Councilman Ed Reyes, who sits on the three-member committee, gave his endorsement of the program.
"This card allows people who have been living in the shadows to be out in the light of day," Reyes said, according to the New York Times. "Some say this is a federal issue and not our problem. Well, I'm sorry, I beg to differ."
Villaraigosa's proposal has pushed Los Angeles to the front of the heated immigration debate, with city officials having enacted several policies this year regarding undocumented residents.
In March, as reported by the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles police commission voted to change the city's impound policy which lessened penalties for drivers caught driving without a license. Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck has also gone on the record with The Los Angeles Times in February as stating that he believed all that California should issue provisional driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
"My personal belief is that they should be able to" have licenses, Beck told Times reporters and editorial writers in a February meeting. "The reality is that all the things that we've done - 'we' being the state of California - over the last 14, 16 years have not reduced the problem one iota, haven't reduced undocumented aliens driving without licenses. So we have to look at what we're doing. When something doesn't work over and over and over again, my view is that you should reexamine it to see if there is another way that makes more sense."
While immigrant groups have offered their support of Villaraigosa's plan, it has also met criticism from others .
"This means a lot to this community of day laborers," Antonio Bernabe, a Mexican immigrant who organizes street vendors and day laborers, told the New York Times. "Every day, they are victims of robberies, because they have to carry their own money with them. They are not able to go into a bank and deposit their money, and they are affected going into a city building, because they need an ID."
"An ID that recognizes residents as Angelenos with access to all city agencies would be a great benefit for all of us," Alexandra Suh, executive director of the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, told the LA Times. "Things like the ability to check out a library book, to access health services, to enroll our kids in school, why should this depend on immigration status?"
However, the Granada Hills North Neighborhood Council, a local civic group in the Granada Hills district of the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, rejected a similar, more limited plan proposed by City Councilman Richard Alarcon, according to Councilman Sid Gold.
"The feeling was there are other ways for people who don't have documents to open bank accounts, and this is really a federal policy, not a city policy," Gold, a psychiatrist, told the LA Times. "The city should really focus on things important to the city, like balancing the budget, fixing the streets and the transportation-tax proposal."
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