The New York DMV is trying to prevent illegal aliens [1] from getting New York driver's licenses. If you've been reading the New York Times or the New York Daily News or press releases from various organizations, you might have been confused into thinking that they're trying to prevent all immigrants from getting licenses, but that's not true.

For instance, the far-left New York Immigration Coalition [2] has a page [3] discussing this issue. Only one sentence on that page makes an oblique reference to this being an issue of legal vs. illegal: The law does NOT say that immigration status is a requirement for drivers' licenses. Everywhere else on that page it just uses some variant of "immigrant" to describe those affected by the DMV's new rule.

One of the contact persons listed at that page is Amy Sugimori of the National Employment Law Project. Another group attempting to keep driver's licenses in the hands of illegal aliens [4] is the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, or PRLDEF. (Puerto Ricans, as U.S. citizens, shouldn't have any problem getting a New York driver's license.) Both the NELP and the PRLDEF are funded in part by the Ford Foundation; PRLDEF has received $2 million from Ford over the years. That foundation is also the major funder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF: $25 million over the years. While MALDEF has not taken part in the New York case, it opposed anti-illegal-immigration laws in California and Arizona.

All of the foregoing is to be expected from far-left, Ford Foundation-funded organizations. However, their attempts to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration seems to have infected other sources that should know better.

The NYIC co-sponsored a November 2, 2004 exit poll, the results of which were released just last week (PDF file [5]). Bearing in mind that all of the respondents should have been either native-born or naturalized citizens, one of the poll questions asked:

Support Driver's Licenses for Non-citizen Residents of New York State (Yes, No, Don't Know)

At the best that question is meaningless and at the worst it's intentionally misleading. To repeat, no one is trying to prevent all non-citizen residents from getting driver's licenses, just illegal aliens.

The principal investigator of the poll was Lorraine C. Minnite [6], an Assistant Professor at Barnard College:

"Funding and support provided by the New York Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, Barnard College, the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and The New York Immigration Coalition"

Please send an email to her and the dean of Barnard College suggesting that they avoid such sloppy advocacy scholarship in the future: lcm25 *at* columbia.edu, eboylan *at* barnard.edu

The poll was the subject of a 2/20/05 article in the NY Daily News by Albor Ruiz: "Pol: Immigrants elect to vote" [7]. He repeats the poll's misleading question without attempting to put it into its proper context. Emails: editor *at* nydailynews.com, aruiz *at* edit . nydailynews . com

The New York Times' coverage of this issue has been similar, although there may or may not be such a direct link between the NYIC or other organizations and the NYT's reporters. Most of the NYT's coverage comes from Nina Bernstein. For the most part her coverage reads like an NYIC press release, slightly edited for accuracy. While Bernstein does occasionally use the word "illegal", she more frequently uses misleading euphemisms: "immigrants who cannot prove that they are here legally", "newcomers", or just plain "immigrants." She also used as a quote source someone who's an immigration lawyer and a member of the AILA without revealing that affiliation. Her 02/18/05 piece "License Denials for Immigrants Are Blocked" took nine paragraphs to disclose that she was talking about illegal immigrants. Her latest piece on this issue is "Albany Tries to Restore Limits on Licenses for Immigrants" [8], which is only slightly less misleading than her previous advocacy journalism pieces.

Please contact public *at* nytimes.com and suggest they stop trying to mislead their readers.

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[1] nypost . com/postopinion/editorial/41307.htm
[2] thenyic . org
[3] thenyic . org/issue.asp?cid=99
[4] nyjournalnews . com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050224/NEWS05/502240329/1021
[5] thenyic . org/images/uploads/NAEP%202004%20Results.pdf
[6] cedar . barnard . columbia . edu/~polisci/faculty/minnite.html
[7] nydailynews . com/boroughs/story/282480p-242090c.html
[8] nytimes . com/2005/02/24/nyregion/24license.html