INS Delay Holds Up Application for Driver’s License

Takeshi Ishizaki said he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

His temporary driver’s license was about to expire, and his permanent license--for which he had passed all the tests Sept. 18--had not arrived.

When he called the Department of Motor Vehicles, Ishizaki wrote, “To my surprise, the representative said that they didn’t know what was going on with our application and that they could do nothing on it before the temporary license expires. His advice was, ‘call the DMV after it expires’! I can’t believe what he said to me.”

Bill Madison, a DMV spokesman in Sacramento, couldn’t believe it either.

“That person was in error,” he said. “It may have been a new technician who didn’t understand the situation.”

The situation, Madison’s research showed, is this:

The Ishizakis are visitors from Japan, in this country on special visas for a year while he does research at the computer science department at UC Irvine. In applying for their licenses, Madison said, the couple supplied papers documenting the legality of their status. The DMV, however, cannot legally issue a permanent license until such documentation is verified by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. And the INS has not yet responded, Madison said.

Madison promises to lean on the folks at immigration to speed up the process. In the meantime, he said, the Ishizakis will be issued new temporary licenses.

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Last week’s column item about freeway onramp signs that don’t tell you which lane to get into until you are at the ramp drew a big response.

The situation often causes cars to cut across several lanes because, as last week’s correspondent put it, drivers “couldn’t figure out which side of the street had the turn lane for the freeway entrance.”

Tom Fortune, a spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority, offered a simple explanation: “Caltrans signs come too late for a driver to switch lanes,” he wrote, “because Caltrans likes to put its entry signs on the right-of-way it owns, i.e. right at the freeway, not half a block ahead.”

In 1990, Fortune said, OCTA’s predecessor, the Orange County Transportation Commission, paid to have 44 signs giving advance onramp directions placed around the county. As a result, he wrote, “the problem is less troublesome here than in Los Angeles and other California counties.”

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Speaking of Caltrans, a department spokesman says engineers still are putting together a list of roads, including some in Orange County, where the speed limit will be increased to 65 mph.

The federal law allowing states to increase speed limits went into effect Friday.

Caltrans had said that by last week it would release a list of the freeways where the speed limit will be increased. Now it’s not saying when that will happen.

“The routes are still being reviewed, and the process isn’t complete,” Caltrans spokesman Russell Snyder said.

“We’ve ordered a bunch of sixes,” he said. “As soon as the list comes out, we will go and plaster them over the fives, and those roads will become the 65-mph routes.”

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Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.