The thin veneer that separates the debate between illegal immigration and legal immigration is wearing away in Michigan. State Representatives Pamela Hornberger (R-Chesterfield Township) and Beth Griffin (R-Mattawan) have introduced legislation to make driver’s licenses for immigrants visually distinct.
The intent is to expose immigrants who remain beyond the expiration of their residency status. Michigan licenses already expire when legal residency expires.
The result is a reminder of , the fact that the person with a marked license is different from the “normal” Michigander, and a reinforcement of that stigma at often the worst, most dangerous moment for a person of color — a police interaction.
Seven percent of Michiganders are immigrants and slightly more than seven percent have an immigrant parent, according to the American Immigration Council (AIC).The same AIC study shows undocumented immigrants paid almost $87 million in Michigan state and local taxes in 2014. Half of those immigrants are naturalized citizens, who, if their IDs were marked, would be for no reason other than to separate them from the rest of the populace. And over 5,000 Dreamers live and work in Michigan.
Tuesday afternoon, Michigan republicans removed the section of the bill that would place this mark on naturalized citizens and determinant aliens. Facing pressure from immigration advocacy groups, the “visual marking” was replaced with the letters LT for “Limited Term,” which scales back the dramatic fashion in which profiling was enabled without doing anything to change the fundamental reality that every interaction with police requires an immigrant to expose their status.
Not that the change isn’t progress. The “sloppy language” of the original bill, according to Susan Reed, Managing Attorney for the Michigan Immigrants Rights Center, “turned your little plastic driver’s license card into an immigrant judge who can see into the future.”
It now only humiliates, others, and risks violence and profiling for immigrants. So, that’s progress.