DMV Check of Immigration Touches Off Anger and Praise

Martin Campos was only one day late. But the delay is likely to cause him lasting frustration and inconvenience.

“This is so unfair,” the dejected and disbelieving fruit salesman said Tuesday after he left the Department of Motor Vehicles office in South-Central Los Angeles.

Campos, a 29-year-old Mexican national who acknowledged being an illegal immigrant, was among the first people to be turned away under a new state law requiring that all first-time applicants for driver’s licenses and DMV identification cards prove that they are in the United States legally.

Throughout Southern California, DMV workers began asking all license applicants--immigrants and U.S. natives--Tuesday to produce documents proving their legal status in the United States.

The law is one part of an ongoing, broad-based strategy on the state and national levels to deny public services and other benefits to immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

“This is designed to close the loopholes, close the magnet for people who get past the Border Patrol,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a private group that favors restrictions on new immigrants.

But critics say such measures will only raise hardships and, in the case of the driver’s statute, expand the pool of unlicensed and uninsured drivers--increasing accidents and driving up premium payments for California motorists.

“If it’s supposed to stop people from coming across the border, it will fail,” said Roberto Lovato, head of the Central American Resource Center.

Recently, thousands of immigrants have jammed DMV offices statewide seeking to beat the deadline. Confusion has been rampant. Although the law only applies to new applicants, many immigrants beat a path to the DMV to renew their licenses, rather than take any chances.

Some Los Angeles-area DMV offices reported double the normal workload Monday.

“Yesterday was pretty hectic,” said Dolores Orrante of the Van Nuys DMV office.

In Fullerton, DMV workers took about 750 photographs for licenses and identification cards Monday, compared to the usual 500, said Al Gausman, the office’s operations officer.

By Tuesday, crowds had diminished throughout the Southland. Processing of new license applicants did take a little longer because of workers’ need to check any of 20 documents--including birth certificates, immigration green cards and U.S. citizenship papers--that the DMV requires to prove legal presence.

As mandated by the law, officials said they were asking all new applicants for proof of their legal presence in the United States.

“All we care about is the paperwork, not what someone looks like,” said Joyce A. Rhodes of the South-Central Los Angeles DMV office.

Immigrants who do not have proof of legal residence will be turned away--but not reported to U.S. immigration authorities, officials have said.

Although officials said things ran smoothly Tuesday, many immigrants--even those possessing legal documents--were bitter.

Tomas Vazquez was livid that his wife was unable to get a DMV identification card. “What if, God forbid, she’s in an accident and she has no identification. Will they bury her in a common grave?”

The DMV initially opposed the law.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that this poses a hardship on the Hispanic community and personally, I don’t like it,” said Francisco Gamboa, manager of the Market Street DMV office in Ventura. “But it’s the law.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Aaron Curtiss in the San Fernando Valley and Mark Gladstone in Sacramento and correspondents Richard Core in Orange County and J.E. Mitchell in Ventura.