Ezell Unveils Initiative for State-Issued Identity Cards

Proposition 187 proponent Harold Ezell announced plans for a ballot measure Tuesday requiring the state Department of Motor Vehicles to issue verified, tamper-proof driver’s licenses and ID cards to help prevent illegal immigrants and citizens intent on fraud from receiving welfare, unemployment insurance and other government benefits.

“This will make a major difference in the way people look at California and how they access our tax dollar benefits,” said Ezell, a former INS regional director. “This is not only going to significantly dissuade illegal immigration. It’s also going to dissuade, in my opinion, those people from other states that are going through the blizzards right now, saying, ‘Hey, I can’t make it here in New York . . . let’s go to California and live off the fat of the land of the Golden State.’ ”

Backers of the initiative, which has already won support from the state Republican Party and the California American Legion, hope to collect more than 600,000 signatures by May in order to qualify for the November ballot.

The measure calls for anyone seeking state-funded social services and benefits--including infants and children who qualify for Aid to Families With Dependent Children--to have DMV-issued ID cards that prove their citizenship or legal residency. To qualify for a card or a new driver’s license, a person would have to verify their identity through a birth certificate or fingerprints.

The initiative would also require fingerprinting of Californians at the time of birth and would require information regarding the residency status of a person’s mother to appear on birth certificates.

Although proponents say they are confident the measure holds wide appeal for voters, they acknowledge that it could face stiff opposition from civil libertarians on both the right and left who consider mandatory ID cards an Orwellian intrusion by big government. Indeed, this is one of the few issues in which the ACLU and several leaders of the Proposition 187 movement are in agreement--in opposition.

San Diego resident Ted Hilton, who drafted the measure, said he is more concerned with current abuses of government benefits through lax identification than such civil liberties issues.

“Big Brother is on autopilot,” Hilton told a Los Angeles news conference. “And this is what’s going to take Big Brother off autopilot.”

Proposition 187, aimed at barring illegal immigrants from public education and nonemergency health services, was approved by state voters in November 1994. But a federal district judge recently declared that major portions of the measure are invalid.

Ezell expressed confidence that the ID initiative would satisfy legal concerns, but said it will need a major push from the Republican Party or grass-roots interest groups to obtain the signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The proposal was immediately attacked Tuesday by Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU in Los Angeles, and Ron Prince, who headed the Proposition 187 campaign.

“It’s just this right-wing rich conservative attitude about poor people and making it much more difficult for them to exercise their rights,” Ripston said. “If you’re not documented but your children are citizens, you might not want to go to the DMV to try and prove their citizenship.”

Prince said: “We have more than enough identity cards currently. The only problem we have is verifying the information already contained in these cards.”