Groups rushing to prepare unauthorized immigrants for Minnesota driver's ID change

For eight years, four nights a week, Liz Lopez's husband awoke at 3 a.m., left their sleeping child at home alone and dashed to pick up his wife from her night job cleaning a grocery store in Plymouth.

The couple said they had little choice. Lopez is an unauthorized immigrant from Mexico. And since 2003, undocumented workers have not been allowed to obtain a valid driver's license in the state of Minnesota.

Come Oct. 1, the law will change, and groups helping immigrants are in overdrive with informational and driver education programs to get people ready.

The change is expected to give the state's unauthorized immigrants like Lopez an economic lift by opening up higher-paying jobs or second jobs farther from home. Legal licenses also may provide the immigrants the identification necessary to open bank accounts, avoid high check-cashing fees, buy car insurance or qualify for better interest rates, advocates said.

The state has 81,000 unauthorized immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. So the chance to possess a valid state I.D. — often for the first time — "will have a major economic impact," said Veena Iyer, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

"There are so many cases now where because people are not able to get a driver's license, they decide not to drive at all and have to rely on other people to give them rides or on public transportation where they have to take five buses," Iyer said. "If any of those things don't work out, it means your employer doesn't have the person they need, and that individual is at risk of losing their job."

If they get caught driving illegally, they could end up deported, Iyer said.

Lopez tried to drive to work once. She was stopped by police. The experience traumatized her, and she never drove again, she testified in January before a Minnesota House Transportation Committee hearing.

Lopez now plans to apply for a driver's license, buy a car and accept her boss' offer to transfer to a store farther from her home so she can get more hours. She makes $14.50 an hour cleaning the grocery store. She hopes that eventually, with a car, that she will find a baking job that could pay closer to $20 an hour.

Community groups such as Unidos MN, Minnesota Immigrant Movement and Fe y Justicia are hosting statewide information sessions, sharing bilingual drivers manuals, organizing driver-test study groups and getting the word out that unauthorized immigrants should get ready for the change.

More recently, the groups got some help from the state.

On May 2, 10 employees from the state's Department of Vehicle Services (DVS) met with dozens of immigrants at the Mercado Central on Lake Street in Minneapolis, with the help of Unidos MN staffers who acted as translators.

In one room, three DVS workers explained to a couple that when they apply for licenses this fall, they should simply report that they don't have Social Security numbers. Do not use any false identification, they said.

In another room were Mary Boyer, a DVS license integrity unit specialist, and two translators, working through a long line of people.

The future applicants learned they will have to present identification before they can take the written drivers test. A birth certificate, passport or consulate document will do, Boyer said, noting that no one is required to show proof of citizenship. And no immigration references will appear on their final Minnesota license.

The informational outreach is a reversal in strategy. For years, "our messaging was poor and we had bad access," said DVS spokesman Mark Karstedt.

Now "we want to make sure that people know the driver's license is available and that they don't have to feel threatened that someone is going to come knock on their door and haul them out of the country," he said. "We are trying to meet people where they are and where they need service."

Juan, who asked that his real name not be used because he is an unauthorized immigrant, learned from DVS specialists Jennifer Nelson and Shawn Dunford that his recently revoked driver's license will simply be reinstated once he applies for a new license in October.

Relieved, the construction worker swiped at tears.

After his license was revoked in January due to a change in state law, "I was too afraid to drive. I sold the car," he said through a translator. Since January, he's spent about $700 on Uber to get to and from work.

He can't risk deportation because he would lose access to cancer treatments, he said.

"Having a valid driver's license will give me better job security that everything will be OK," Juan said. "I know with having a driver's license that if I get into a car accident, I won't have to run away. I can stay."

Hector, a 29-year-old Eden Prairie resident who also asked that his last name not be used, said "This is huge!" when Boyer told him that the drunken-driving charge he got in 2015 will not hurt his ability to get a valid driver's license come October.

He said he learned an important lesson in 2015.

The charge prompted the federal government to terminate his work permit, issued under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which led to the revocation of his driver's license, he said. Hector is a self-employed information technology worker who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico at age 3.

Without the driver's license, he had to turn down jobs out of state, including two gigs worth $5,000 and $20,000 in Las Vegas and Florida. Now, he's hopeful.

"I love the U.S. And if I can get my driver's license, I am like, 'Heck yeah, man.' It will open up quite a bit of opportunity," he said. "I am super glad they are doing this. It's amazing."

Boyer understood: "This will change people's lives."

Getting to this point took 20 years of hard lobbying at the State Capitol and overcoming critics who said undocumented Minnesotans don't deserve the "privilege" of driving, said Sara Lopez, policy director of Unidos MN and Rep. María Isa Pérez-Vega, DFL-West St. Paul.

Lopez said the change in law was "a matter of dignity."

Pérez-Vega agreed. "If you have accessibility to get from point A to point B, without hiding," she said, "and without fear or having to walk in frozen temperatures to avoid breaking the law, you already know the workforce will have such a strength from that."