BREAKING: Municipal ID Bill Passes New Haven's Board of Alderman

Tonight, New Haven has passed the first legislation of its kind in the country by a vote of 25-1 – A municipal ID bill that would open up an array of services to New Haven residents, including undocumented aliens.

The Courant had a story today that explains the program:

To address the problem, New Haven wants to create a municipal identification card, which supporters say would help assimilate immigrants as well as provide a range of benefits to other residents who may not have official IDs, such as the elderly and children.

The card would be recognized as official identification within city limits, allowing immigrants to open bank accounts and avoid carrying around wads of cash.

The card also would provide all holders access to city services, from parks to libraries, and function as a type of limited debit card.

The Courant also drives home the human side of why this is a necessary and vital program:

The desperate whimpers coming from inside the locked apartment convinced Marieah Viviel she had to get inside.

The plaintive noise grew louder as Viviel called her friend’s name: “Elena! Elena!”

Viviel repeatedly threw her body against the flimsy door until it flung open. She found Elena and her 7-year-old son lying on the kitchen floor, their hands and feet bound with electrical cords.

They had been there for days. A foul stench hung in the air. The apartment was in disarray, ransacked. Everything of value was gone. Mother and child were terrified.

“His face, it was almost like he had a grownup’s face,” Viviel said, who described the two victims as undocumented immigrants from El Salvador. “Fear changed his face.”

The home invasion robbery fit an all-too-familiar pattern for the day-to-day lives of illegal immigrants. Lacking formal documents, they cannot open bank accounts. That means they often carry cash or keep it in their homes, which makes them robbery targets.

Emphasis added.

Mayor DeStefano explained the importance of the “Elm City Resident Cards” in a press release today (no link – I got the release in an email):

“This card will allow everyone who lives in New Haven the opportunity to have a qualified identity, a name that will be acknowledged by the City, the police department, hospitals, merchants and the community,” said DeStefano. “At the end of the day, it’s all about community – about people from all walks of life living in this City, sending our children to the same successful schools and living on the same streets, together as neighbors. Our community is one that values the contributions of every individual and for that reason we should each have the right to be called by our name. The Elm City Resident Card confirms this.”

The opposition, the Southern Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Reform, based in North Branford, respond on their website (no link, sorry) with characteristic restraint:

HIS FEUDAL LORD DESTEFANO, TURNS NEUVO HAVANNA (FORMALLY NEW HAVEN) INTO A VASSAL STATE AS AMERIKA YAWNS.
June 4, 07 remember this day New Haven ,this day will be referred to in history as the sunset of our Nation. I am deeply concerned about the cavalier and open manner in which Destefano and his cronies flaunt and intentionally subvert the law (US code 8.) and the underhanded and secretive techniques they use to subvert it. Remember this New Haven, the radical left and international corperate interests salivate at the very thought of the MUNICIPAL I.D. It fits in with their plan of replacing LEGAL AMERICANS with less demanding, lower maintainance, less educated and less costly SERFS. I must say I’m surprised and disappointed at how easily the traitors; the leftests and despots at NH city hall have outwitted and coersced what has proven to be a politically ignorant and disinterested public while hardly breaking a sweat . Tommorrow will tell the story… it appears LEGAL AMERICANS are willing to trade their quality of life, for the price of a shiny new card they can swipe thru a parking meter. Well, when 100,000 or so ILLEGALS come to town and swipe your jobs using THEIR NEWLY ACQUIRED MUNICIPAL ID’S… maybe you can use your new card to feed the meter…in front of the unemployment office.

Here is my bottom line – There are somewhere around 12 million undocumented aliens in the United States. The idea of deporting all of them is staggeringly unrealistic, both pragmatically and in economic terms. So we have two choices (three if you include advocating deporting all of them from your softly-padded room): Stick your head in the sand, pretend it isn’t happening, occasionally pick your head up and nibble around the margins with legislation that is sure both not to pass and to infuriate everyone, rinse, lather, repeat (you may recognize this as the approach of the federal government).

Or, do what New Haven (and, to a lesser extent the state, through allowing the children of undocumented aliens to pay instate tuition rates at public colleges) is doing and take the first step toward integrating immigrants into our society and culture, eliminating the incentive for violent criminals to use them as human ATMs, and hope that something you do somehow forces the federal government to actually address the issue. As a woman in this clip argues, the people involved are already our neighbors and will continue to be – what we do is up to us (at least, thats what I inferred her point to be before the arguing broke out).

Make no mistake about it, so long as there are economic incentives that create a demand for people to cross our borders, you can build a fence to the moon and it won’t prevent a thing. The only question is whether we as a society take steps to integrate immigrants into American life and culture or continue to create a permanent immigrant underclass with no hope of emerging from the shadows.

I, the decedents of two peoples, one who sailed into New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty (you know, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled mass yearning to breathe free, that statue) to lay bricks and create a better life and the other who ran from their homes, possessions, and everything they knew to escape certain death at the hands of a madman (luckily with documents, unlike so many others), vote for a larger, more inclusive American society. If it takes the Elm City to lead the Land of the Free, then so be it.

Update: MLN has DeStefano’s full press release.

Update: Spazeboy weighs in.

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