Visa Lawyer Blog

Articles Posted in Driver’s Licenses for Undocumented

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The 27th AILA (American Immigration Lawyer Association) California Chapter Conference was held between the 13th and 15th of November 2014 at San Jose, California. Attorney Yingei Zhou, Esq. was in attendance on behalf of our law firm. The conference concentrated on several trending topics such as status of comprehensive immigration reform, consular processing and updates with border posts in Mexico and Canada, driver’s licenses for undocumented workers, unaccompanied alien children (UAC), H-1B/L-1A/O-1/EB-1 adjudications, federal litigation, and advanced family immigration issues, as well as staple subjects like evidentiary issues in removal proceedings and PERM applications.

This article provides you several important updates from the conference addressed at the conference, especially the government open forums with AILA practitioners, USCIS representatives, CBP officers, and San Francisco Asylum officers.

In the following weeks, we will post more articles to address the trends on each specific visa applications and immigration proceedings discussed in the conference.

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President Obama’s executive order is looming on the horizon, as part of an alleged 10 point plan the president plans to announce as early as Friday, November 21. According to a draft proposal released by a U.S. government agency, the plan may suspend removal proceedings for millions of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, as well as parents of U.S. Citizen children residing in the United States illegally, and parents of green card holders, by allowing them to benefit from a reprieve that will expand deferred action for these individuals. Among its 10 initiatives, firstly, the plan proposes to bolster border security, secondly, to improve pay for immigration officers, thirdly, to provide a 50% discount to the first 10,000 applicants whose income levels are below 200% of the poverty level in order to encourage participation, fourthly, to establish a program designed to stimulate the tech industry which could potentially offer millions of immigrants and their dependents a path to citizenship, and lastly, to prioritize removal proceedings on the basis of the severity of an immigrant’s criminal history, calling an end to the program known as ‘Secure Communities.’ This 10 point plan makes anyone who entered the United States before turning 16 and before the date of January 01, 2010, eligible for naturalization. Such a plan would thereby suspend deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants.

The proposal has not yet been announced, we would like to inform our audience to please be wary of fraudulent schemes. At this time ONLY preliminary information has been released.

Please continue to follow our blog for further updates, for more information please contact our office.  It is our goal to provide you with the most up to date immigration reform developments.

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On September 19, 2014 the California Department of Motor Vehicles released a statement detailing the progress it has made to date in order to implement Assembly Bill 60, operative January 01, 2015. Assembly Bill 60 was signed into law by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr on October 2013 for the benefit of all California residents. The bill promises to improve public safety, for all Californians, by requiring undocumented persons to go through the same licensure requirements as legal permanent residents and U.S. Citizens, residing in the state of California. In addition, applicants will be required to provide satisfactory proof of identity and California residency, though exact documentation requirements are still being deliberated and have not officially been made public. To view the proposals on documentation required please click here. The fee for the AB 60 driver’s license will remain the same as the fee for original driver’s licenses at $33.00. Before AB 60, applicants could not apply for a California driver’s license because of their inability to submit the required proof of legal presence in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security recently notified the DMV that the state’s most recent AB 60 driver’s license design had met the standard required to move forward to the production stage.

Since its adoption, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has held over 80 public outreach events throughout California, educating local communities on the implementation of the new law. Additionally the DMV has hired new staff, organized department-wide training, and opened temporary offices, with the purpose of facilitating extra appointments for the nearly 1.4 million anticipated new driver’s that will apply during just the first three years of AB 60’s implementation.

The DMV has launched such outreach events with the support of foreign consulate offices, community and church organizations, law enforcement, and other local officials. At these events the DMV has explained the licensing requirements under the new law, encouraged the undocumented community to study for the written driver’s license examination early on, and provided tips to the undocumented community on how to study for the exam.

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