immigrants is the lack of official identification. Without government-issued IDs, they are frequently barred from opening bank accounts, signing contracts and leases, reporting crimes to police, or entering public buildings. Sometimes they can’t even go to their children’s schools for parent-teacher conferences.
Most states refuse to issue driver’s licenses for people without legal status. Supporters of this policy claim that having a license allows immigrants to get benefits they aren’t entitled to—and even helps terrorists. “One of the reasons the 9/11 terrorists were so successful was because they had access to official identification,” Ira Mehlman, media director of the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said in 2014. But the September 11 attacks had nothing to do with undocumented immigrants. The hijackers all came to the United States legally, with visas, and most of them still had valid status when they carried out the attacks. Eight of them had obtained non-driver IDs from the Department of Motor Vehicles in Virginia, a state that barred out-of-status immigrants from getting driver’s licenses or non-driver IDs.18
Issuing licenses actually helps fight terrorism by getting accurate information into government databases, according to national security experts. There are also traffic safety issues: research suggests that expanding opportunities for drivers to get tested, licensed, and insured would reduce the frequency and cost of vehicle collisions.19
The situation seems to be changing. Eleven states had laws as of 2013 giving access to driver’s licenses or other identification regardless of immigration status. In 2013 alone, eight states enacted laws expanding immigrants’ access to licenses. Meanwhile, cities with large immigrant populations have begun making municipal ID cards available to all residents. New Haven, Connecticut, started the trend in 2007, and as of 2015 eleven other cities had issued their own cards, including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The New Haven program has “helped residents feel like New Haven is home and they’re a part of the community,” the city’s communications director, Laurence Grotheer, said in 2014. “For immigrants, it begins the process of assimilation and puts them on the road to full community participation.”20
Do immigrants have the right to an education?
All immigrant children, regardless of their status, have the right to public education through the high school level. The Supreme Court upheld this principle in the June 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision, overturning a Texas state law that sought to deny school funding for undocumented students.21
The situation is more complicated when it comes to higher education institutions such as universities and technical schools. Though many countries consider higher education to be a universal right, the United States generally treats it as a privilege. Still, many community colleges and public universities in the United States provide accessible degree programs to city or state residents. Before 1996, it didn’t matter if those students were immigrants living here without permission from the federal government.
Section 505 of the 1996 Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) barred states from granting reduced tuition to undocumented state residents unless non-resident U.S. citizens in the same circumstances get the same privilege. As of April 2006, only about 5 to 10 percent of undocumented young people who graduated from high school went on to college, compared with about 75 percent of their classmates.22 The result was that many thousands of immigrants who came here as young children, had been educated in U.S. public schools, spoke English just like people born here, and felt as “American” as anyone else, now found themselves without a future. Denied in-state tuition, unable to qualify for financial aid under federal rules, and unable to work legally, they got stuck in low-paying jobs and shut out of more promising opportunities.
Angela Perez, a Colombian immigrant, didn’t even apply to college despite ranking fourth in her 2004 graduating class with a 3.8 grade-point average. “It feels awful,” she wrote in an essay during her sophomore year. “I feel frustrated. I try hard until I accomplish something and I do not want all my accomplishments to be a waste of time. I want them to be valuable. I want to be able to pay my parents back after all their support and the difficulties they have lived in order to bring me here.”23
Out-of-status students who did manage to get through college were still unable to pursue a career without legal status—like Kathy, another young immigrant, who graduated from Nyack College in New York with a degree in social work, but could only get a job as a nanny. “Graduation was the most depressing day of my life,” she said.24
Since 2004, undocumented youth and students have organized to win substantial changes. By June 2014, at least seventeen states, the states where the majority of the country’s undocumented immigrants live, had passed laws allowing undocumented students to qualify for in-state college tuition if they attended high school in the state for a certain number of years and graduated. (The state laws comply with the 1996 Act by allowing U.S. citizens who meet the same state high school attendance and graduation requirements to get the same tuition rate, even if they no longer live in the state.)25
Sustained organizing by undocumented young people led the Obama administration to launch the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in June 2012, allowing many undocumented immigrants who came here as children to apply for two-year work permits and a temporary reprieve from deportation. By the end of fiscal year 2015, nearly 700,000 people had been granted DACA.26
What’s it like to work here “illegally”?
Lack of legal status forces many undocumented workers into jobs where they earn less money and face more dangerous conditions than other workers. Not wanting to draw attention to their situation, and afraid of losing the jobs they have, undocumented workers are often reluctant to fight for better wages or working conditions. Many are scared to join unions, and until recently few unions made an effort to organize them. Those out-of-status immigrants who do try to defend their workplace rights face an uneven playing field. Employers may suddenly decide to fire workers who lack documents, or use the threat of raids and deportation to squelch organizing efforts.27
Several studies show that undocumented workers get paid less on average than authorized immigrants with similar skills and experience.28 A lot of undocumented immigrants are paid poorly because they have less than a high school education, but they’re still paid less than other workers without a diploma. Out-of-status men who worked off the books in Los Angeles County’s huge underground economy made an average of $16,553 a year in 2004, according to a study by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research organization; out-of-status women averaged just $7,630. Although they worked in major industries like apparel and textile manufacturing, these workers were paid far below industry standards, and much less than other workers who didn’t finish high school; in 2004 the median earnings for male high-school dropouts nationally were $23,192 a year, and $17,368 for women.29
A 2012 study on working conditions in Durham, North Carolina, had similar results. Researchers interviewed 339 Spanish-speaking male immigrants in 2006 and early 2007. On average, the undocumented workers made about $17,268 a year; they were likely to be working off the books, and most didn’t receive sick leave, paid overtime, or paid vacations. The survey ended just before the collapse of a housing boom. About 70 percent of the men surveyed worked in construction, so the “serious vulnerability of immigrant Hispanic men, already evident even under peak economic conditions, undoubtedly worsened further still with the [2007–2009] recession,” wrote the study’s author, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Chenoa Flippen.30
A higher proportion of people of color, women, and the foreign-born are paid less than the minimum wage, compared to whites, men, and the native-born. Undocumented workers in low-paid jobs get singled out for the worst treatment of all. A survey of more than 4,000 low-wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and
