Driver's Licenses for All? Racialized Illegality and the Implementation of Progressive Immigration Policy in California

• Author: S. Karthick Ramakrishnan,Laura E. Enriquez,Daisy Vazquez Vera
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12121
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019

Driver’s Licenses for All? Racialized Illegality and

the Implementation of Progressive Immigration

Policy in California

LAURA E. ENRIQUEZ, DAISY VAZQUEZ VERA, and

S. KARTHICK RAMAKRISHNAN

Progressive subfederal immigration policy aims to reduce the consequences of illegality for

undocumented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with representatives from immigrant-serving

organizations in California, we examine the case of Assembly Bill (A.B.) 60 driver’s licenses

to assess whether all Californian undocumented immigrants have equal access to a driver’s

license. Although A.B. 60 was race-neutral legislation, we argue that its implementation was

shaped by racialized migration histories and that it reproduces racialized illegality. Specifi-

cally, the deep history of undocumented Mexican migration to California has shaped the insti-

tutional capacity of nonprofit and community organizations, foreign consulates, and the

Department of Motor Vehicles to advocate for, implement, and serve A.B. 60 applicants. As a

result, Spanish-speaking, Latina/o/x immigrants, particularly those of Mexican origin, experi-

ence greater access to A.B. 60 driver’s licenses. To combat this, organizations actively worked

to reracialize illegality as an issue that also affects non-Latino populations. Ultimately, we

demonstrate that the construction and experience of illegality are deeply tied to race and place.

Given the current anti-immigrant stance of the federal government, subfederal policies

offer a glimmer of opportunity to undocumented immigrants (Varsanyi 2006, 2010;

Gulasekaram and Ramakrishnan 2015). California has led the way with state laws that

push toward greater immigrant integration. Since the mid-1990s, legislation has pro-

vided undocumented immigrants with access to postsecondary education, driver’s

licenses, professional licenses, health care, and protection from federal immigration

enforcement. Ramakrishnan and Colbern (2015) refer to these policies as the “California

Package”: laws that have “significantly expanded the access of unauthorized immigrants

to what we call ‘life chances,’ the right of access to an education, health and employ-

ment, as well as to what we call ‘free presence,’ the right to freedom of movement into

and within the state through access to identification documents and limited state

We thank David FitzGerald and Monica Varsanyi for their comments on previous drafts. Audiences at the

2018 University of California International Migration Conference and the 2018 Migrant Illegality across

Uneven Legal Geographies Conference offered helpful feedback. Allan Colbern, Rocio Garcia, and Asbeidy

Solano provided research assistance. Special thanks to all interview participants. This research received funding

from the California Immigration Research Initiative at the University of California.

Address correspondence to: Laura E. Enriquez, Assistant Professor, Department of Chicano/Latino Studies,

University of California, Irvine, 3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697, USA. Telephone: (949) 824-6190;

Email: laura.enriquez@uci.edu.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 41, No. 1, January 2019

©2019 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2019 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12121

ISSN 0265-8240

enforcement of federal immigration law.” We focus on the case of California Assembly

Bill 60 (A.B. 60), which allowed undocumented immigrants to receive California driver’s

licenses.

An inability to access a state-issued driver’s license contributes to the production of

immigrant illegality. Driving without a license increases the risk of contact with immi-

gration enforcement mechanisms, and this contact, in turn, increases the risk of deten-

tion and deportation (Armenta 2017). Even when police do not cooperate with

immigration officials, there are financial consequences if unlicensed drivers are cited

and/or have their cars impounded (Gabrielson 2010). These risks lead many undocu-

mented immigrants to restructure their lives—driving only at certain times or to fewer

places, for instance—limiting their economic, educational, and social participation

(Schmalzbauer 2014; Stuesse and Coleman 2014; Lin et al. 2016; Enriquez 2017a). Pro-

viding access to driver’s licenses also has broader social benefits, including reducing the

number of hit-and-run incidents (Lueders, Hainmueller, and Lawrence 2017). Thus,

allowing undocumented residents to access driver’s licenses is an important means of

mitigating the consequences of immigrant illegality in everyday life.

Since the 1990s, California had been attempting to establish policies that provide

driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. In 1993, strong anti-immigrant sentiment

pushed legislators to pass Senate Bill 976, which prohibited undocumented immigrants

from obtaining a driver’s license by requiring applicants to prove citizenship or lawful

immigration status. In the two decades since, California legislators have introduced sev-

eral bills to reinstate this privilege to undocumented immigrants (Tang 2018). Some

stalled in the legislature, and many were blocked by Democratic and Republican gover-

nors alike. In 2003, a bill was signed into law, but it was ultimately repealed and never

implemented. The battle finally ended in January 2015 with the implementation of Cali-

fornia Assembly Bill 60 (A.B. 60), or the Safe and Responsible Drivers Act. Passed in

October 2013, the law “require[d] the department to issue an original driver’s license to

a person who is unable to submit satisfactory proof that the applicant’s presence in the

United States is authorized under federal law if he or she meets all other qualifications

for licensure and provides satisfactory proof to the department of his or her identity and

California residency.” However, only a third of the undocumented population applied

for a license in the first year, and only about three in four applications led to the success-

ful issuance of a license (Department of Motor Vehicles [DMV] 2016b). Three years

later, in April 2018, the DMV announced that one million driver’s licenses had been

issued; still, this represented only approximately 38 percent of the state’s undocumented

population (DMV 2018).

1

While it is to be expected that not all undocumented immi-

grants would apply for, or would successfully obtain, a license, it is important to con-

sider whether some groups are disproportionately able to access this opportunity and

the reasons for such unequal access.

Our research indicates that institutional support structures, as marked by place and

the racialized history of immigration in California, play a critical role in shaping differ-

ential access to policies such as A.B. 60. Organizations, including nonprofit/community

organizations, foreign consulates, and governmental offices, are key actors in advocating

for, implementing, and promoting the use of integrative subfederal laws and policies

(Suro 2015; de Graauw and Gleeson 2016; Pastor 2018). Drawing on interviews with

staff members from thirty-two immigrant-serving organizations in California, we find

that the state’s racialized immigration history shapes the institutional landscape and

contributes to a disconnect between “law on the books” and “law in action.” We estab-

lish that the institutional landscape in California is shaped by historical trends and per-

ceptions that racialize undocumented migration as a Latino, and particularly Mexican,

©2019 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2019 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

Enriquez, Vazquez Vera, and Ramakrishnan DRIVER’S LICENSES FOR ALL? 35