Providing for Further Consideration of H.R.418, Real ID Act of 2005

PROVIDING FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 418, REAL ID ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - February 10, 2005)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, the REAL ID Act is a real travesty. It has little to do with homeland security, and it represents just the latest in a string of anti-immigrant proposals so unfortunately popular with certain of our Republican colleagues.

Instead of putting the safety of our families first, these are the same folks that would have turned our emergency room doctors into border patrol agents; who would have cut the funding to cities that did not conduct immigration raids; and who would interfere with the people with whom our private banking institutions could serve and encourage instead an underground, black market financial system.

This same anti-immigrant fervor continues to fuel this bad bill. The REAL ID Act is designed to make our roads real unsafe. Undocumented workers will be on our roads. That is why the Austin Police Department believes that Texans would be safer if the law allowed all drivers to obtain licenses.

As Assistant Police Chief Rudy Landeros testified, "In allowing the community the opportunity to obtain driver's licenses, they will have to pass a driver's test, and that will make them not only informed drivers, but safer drivers."

The Texas legislature, in a bill by former Representative Miguel Wise, wisely recognized that requiring all drivers to obtain licenses would make Texas families safer. Had it not been for the veto by Texas's myopic governor, this common-sense call for public safety would be the law in the President's home state.

Legal immigrants could also be denied a license. Paula Waddle, an immigration attorney in the Rio Grande Valley, explained that her clients are having delays of as much as 15 months in getting their legal permanent residency papers because of confusion at the Department of Homeland Security. If these legal immigrants do not have sufficient paperwork to prove their legal status, they will be caught up in this same web of anti-immigrant fervor and denied the opportunity to obtain insurance and drive.

Ironically, consideration of this bill coincides with the release this week by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. This proposal would worsen the plight of those whose conditions were the subject of investigation by that commission: asylum-seekers who already face deplorable conditions, who are often treated like common criminals and thrown into jail with common criminals, and who are subject to strip searches as well as solitary confinement. But since current law already bars those who presnet a secruity risk from getting asylum, the additional restrictions in this bill would not make us safer.

We must not sacrifice our democracy in a misguided attempt to save it. This bill strikes the wrong balance. Anti-immigrant hysteria cannot be permitted to drive an agenda that makes us less safe, less healthy, and erodes our civil liberties while failing to address real terrorist threats.

The REAL ID bill ought to be really rejected fast by this Congress.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov