Republicans mull driving IDs for non-citizens

University of Notre Dame student Irasema Hernandez Trujillo remembers the Sunday night in 2008 when a police officer pulled over her mother.

She provided her Mexican driver's license and was ordered out of the car, told that someone with a U.S. license would have to pick them up and warned that next time, she'd be deported. For the next 10 years that it took to gain U.S. citizenship, she never drove a car again, Hernandez Trujillo said. Instead she rode a moped to work through rain, snow and heat waves. All the while, Hernandez Trujillo couldn't participate in sports or extracurricular activities, because no one could take her, she told lawmakers Tuesday.

"What seems simple for many Americans — just a trip to the BMV — created challenges that profoundly impacted my academic and personal life," she said.

For a variety of reasons — from quality of life, to safety on the roads, to jobs and economic growth to diversifying districts — a movement to allow people without citizenship status to obtain driving cards and permits is gaining support from both Democrats and Republicans at the Statehouse. Lawmakers are examining the issue this summer and fall and could recommend legislation for the 2023 Indiana General Assembly.

If Indiana moves forward with a law allowing driving cards or driving card learner permits, as at least 16 other states have, non-citizens can obtain them by going through the same training and tests that everyone else is required to do for a U.S. driver's license, from the 50 hours of supervised driving time to the driving test.

On Tuesday, legislators on the Interim Study Committee on Roads and Transportation listened to nearly five hours of testimony on the subject, which is the first time it's had a hearing.

A version of this bill has been introduced and shelved without a hearing in every legislative session since at least 2013. State Sen. David Niezgodski, D-South Bend, has authored the last six bills. Republicans started cosigning in 2021; in 2022, the legislation included three Democratic and three Republican cosigners.

Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, said he will author another bill next year.

The timing is not a coincidence. The 2020 Census, which revealed significant demographic shifts in Indiana over the last decade, prompted Doriot to take stock of this issue, he told the committee.

Indiana's Hispanic population has grown by 42% since 2010, making up 8% of the state's population, according to the Census. In Doriot's district, which encompasses Elkhart County in northern Indiana, the Hispanic population now makes up about a fifth of the district.

"This isn't just a Hispanic bill," Doriot said. "This is a bill for people who have come here... who are participating in society."

What are driving cards for undocumented residents?

The proposal would come with caveats.

The IDs could not be used as legal identification for any purpose other than driving, such as voting. Nor would the ID cards confer any change to immigration status.

So a driving-record card would satisfy a police officer checking a driver's identification in a traffic stop. Local and state police do not have jurisdiction over federal immigration laws.

The 2021 version of the bill was the subject of a policy analysis by the Notre Dame Student Policy Network, which estimates more than 43,000 undocumented people would take advantage of the new opportunity within the first three years.

Supporters make public safety argument

There's cause to believe such an ID program would improve public safety on the roads.

Tens of thousands of drivers becoming legally vetted would mean more drivers on the road who are trained and tested, paying auto insurance, and no longer burdened by the anxiety of potentially interacting with law enforcement without a valid license to drive — a concern that often prompts people without immigration documentation to flee a scene of a crash.

For these reasons, the Notre Dame study says, the bill could help reduce fatal hit-and-run incidents in Indiana by 4% and decrease the average auto insurance premiums by $25 per year.

About 15% of drivers on Indiana roads are uninsured, said Marty Wood, president of the Insurance Institute of Indiana. The auto insurance industry almost never takes a position on proposals to cut down this number, because they find most proposals ineffective, he said. Driving cards is a rare exception.

"This is one that I truly believe does have the possibility of helping," he said.

Giving people without immigration documentation a legal way to drive would also remove a bottleneck of nonviolent offenders in the criminal justice system, people across the law enforcement spectrum testified.

Minor traffic violations can quickly escalate to misdemeanors when the driver doesn't have identification, Goshen Patrol Division Chief Mario Mora said. He supports the legislation.

Prosecutors will spend far too much money processing people who get put right back on the road, said Chris Daniels, Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor with the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, who supports the legislation.

Instituting the ID cards would ease the workload of the overburdened public defenders system, which sees 2,000 misdemeanor charges of driving without a license filed every year in Marion County alone, said attorney Zach Stock with the Indiana Public Defender Council, who supports the legislation. The vast majority of those charges are against immigrants without documentation, he said.

Stock noted it's not often that public defenders and prosecutors come down on the same side of legislation.

"Public defenders and the prosecutors are in favor of the same concept," Stock said. "I think that's important to keep in mind today."

The economic argument

In an increasingly competitive jobs market, giving non-citizens the ability to drive to work could give Indiana a leg up, multiple representatives from chambers of commerce argued.

The fastest growing population of entrepreneurs in the greater Elkhart area are people of color, and about half the people coming into the office of the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce looking to start a business are immigrants, president and CEO Levon Johnson said.

"We want people to come here," he said, and have them be able to sustain a livelihood.

In the 89 of 92 Indiana counties where the Hispanic population grew, many areas are rural and lack public transit, meaning transportation is the biggest barrier to job access, said Marlene Dotson, president and CEO of the Indiana Latino Institute.

"This is a necessity," she said.

Farm owners spoke of immigrants' crucial contribution to the dairy farming productivity up north. Ramon Bonilla, a high school student from South Bend whose parents are undocumented farm workers, said he sometimes skips school to make ends meet, to drive his parents to appointments or his siblings to school. His dream is to go to college.

With the independence that comes with the ability to drive, people can work more hours and earn more money, potentially adding between $17 million and $23.5 million per year in output for the broader Indiana economy, the Notre Dame study estimates.

What's next?

The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles wants to see key elements included in any potential legislation before lending its support, legislative director Abbigail Raben said. These include requiring in-person visits for renewals, stipulating that the cards cannot be used for identification at both federal and state levels, and requiring a fingerprint background check.

Doriot has signaled an intention to incorporate much of the feedback from Tuesday's hearing into whatever bill he and others author, including Niezgodski and State Rep. Mike Karickhoff, R-Kokomo, who both spoke in favor of potential legislation Tuesday.

"This is a bill whose time has come," Karickhoff said. "I have an interest in this because it's the right thing to do."

The interim study committee will issue a report with legislative recommendations this fall.

Kayla Dwyer is a transportation reporter at IndyStar. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17.