CHAPTER SEVEN: Don’t Say It’s the Right Thing to Do ...



Translating Undocumented (Im)migrants’ Human Rights Claims

into Legislative Policy

I met Assemblymember Cedillo, the author of a bill to restore driver’s license access to Californians regardless of their federal immigration status, at a seminar on California policymaking at the Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley in early 2000. When Cedillo visited the class to address the topic of Latino politics, he had been representing AD 46 for two years. Since his election in 1998, the legislator had been working to reverse the restrictions placed on undocumented and quasi-legal immigrants’ access to the driver’s license that had been imposed during the early 1990s. That evening, Cedillo arrived in a crisp business suit accompanied by his chief of staff, Dan Savage. In 1998, Cedillo brought Savage with him to the legislature from the Service Employees International Union, where they were both active trade unionists in Los Angeles.

Before Cedillo addressed the seminar, Savage distributed copies of a brief biography and two news articles about the freshman legislator to the class. One article bore the headline “Assemblymember Gil Cedillo: Newest Legislator Working to Protect ‘Basic Human Rights’” (Prillwitz 1998). In it, he declared, “I am committed to providing basic human rights… and representing working men and women. Failing to do so not only hurts our economy, but it hurts us spiritually and morally; and we can’t continue to let people suffer like that” (Cedillo in Prillwitz 1998:6). Cedillo did not mention the word “immigrant” in the article, although he represented a district known as the Ellis Island of L.A., with a large population of undocumented and recent arrivals to the United States. His reference to his constituency as “working men and women” also seemed like a move to seize both the political and rhetorical “representation” of his immigrant constituents in California politics. During the mid-1990s, his constituents had been misrepresented rhetorically as “illegal immigrants” and parasites to the state economy. They also had been misrepresented politically by their former Assemblymember Louis Caldera, who had authored legislative driver’s license restrictions that their new representative Cedillo would dedicate years of his life to reversing. Over the next five years, his leadership in the struggle to restore driver’s license access to Californians regardless of their immigration status would make him the target of the country’s most rapid anti-immigrant activists. In harmony with the messages conveyed by activists, Assemblymember Cedillo drew a connection between the representation of Latin American immigrants as workers to their human rights. Yet it was not enough to focus on the human rights of workers; by linking these rights to the health of the economy, he provided a more pragmatic and politically popular foundation.

There have been many lively debates in the academy about the role of human rights in protecting non-citizen migrants within nation-state contexts. In this paper, I join these debates through a discussion of the specific legislative struggle to reverse the withdrawal of driver’s license eligibility for California’s undocumented immigrants. I look at the difficulties of translating human rights arguments and objectives into California’s legislative setting.

The movement for a driver’s license does not appear to be a human rights effort on the surface. Yet I argue that it represents an effort to translate the enormous human rights needs of undocumented Mexican immigrants into a clear policy goal that is potentially achievable through subnational legislation. For activists, the driver’s license came to represent the human right of freedom of movement within nation-state borders [1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. General Assembly resolution 217 A (III)].

in automobile-dependant regions such as Los Angeles and agricultural California. Because undocumented immigrants assert that they primarily need a license to drive to work and support their families, its denial represents a violation of the human right to work. The refusal to grant the materiality of a driver’s license, with its photo, address, and other identifying information, is seen as a denial of their recognition as a person before the law and of their contributions to the state as workers and taxpayers. It seems to render the undocumented invisible and less than human in relation to California. However, once this legislation was introduced, moving a driver’s license bill through the legislature became a matter primarily of “politics” and secondarily of “policy.” It was largely ineffective to argue for the human rights of the undocumented at the legislature; legislative professionals rarely offered this justification. The driver’s license issue was framed as matter of economic growth and public safety for all Californians in legislative and public debates, rather than as an “immigrant issue.” Thus, while the undocumented emerged from the shadows through statewide organizing activities related to la licencia (the driver’s license), they disappeared-- along with their human rights-- in official arguments in favor of extending access to the license. This led to a contradictory situation where the driver’s license was deployed as a tool for organizing and empowering the undocumented, yet immigrants were removed from the rhetoric and public face of the legislative debate.

This paper is largely based on fieldwork conducted from 2000-1 at the state legislature in Sacramento. Additional participant observation radiated from two legislative districts with large Mexican immigrant populations: Assembly District (AD) 50 (Southeast Los Angeles) and AD 28 (Salinas Valley). A multi-sited, multi-focal methodology was employed to trace the circuits of power between three levels that contribute to legislative politics: undocumented Mexican immigrants, organizers and lobbyists, and legislators and their staff.

I. Human Rights of (Im)migrant Workers and the Nation-State: Academic Debates

Numerous scholars have theorized the impact on nation-states of economic globalization, which includes the transnational movement of capital and large-scale labor migration. While some have argued that the power of the state has been eroding (Appadurai 1996), there seems to be a growing a consensus that state policies have helped to forge transnational economic regimes; thus, the authority of the state is transforming rather than fading (Sassen 1996, 1998). I am interested in empirically examining the power of large-scale labor migration to transform “the state” through the case of undocumented Mexican immigrants in California.

Scholars have pointed to two important contradictions in the politics of immigration. First, while we are seeing an increase in economic globalization and regional economic regimes such as NAFTA that enable capital and jobs to move across borders in a relatively unfettered fashion, there is a simultaneous retrenchment against the transborder movement of laborers (Andreas 2000; Nevins 2002; Sassen 1998). This includes the construction of migrant workers as “illegal” (De Genova 2002) or what I call their illegalization. Sassen (1998) believes that this contradiction creates an inherently unstable situation, where free trade regimes push against systems of tight regulation of human mobility. Second, human rights regimes represent a major avenue for establishing the rights of non-citizen migrants who reside in immigrant-receiving nation-states. However, the main route for the enforcement of human rights is through the same nation-states that violate them (Sassen 1998).[1]

Scholars view the potential of obtaining human rights standards for migrants within the framework of the receiving nation-state with varying degrees of optimism. Yasemin Soysal (1994) extrapolates from her study of the situation of guestworkers in Western European nations that individual rights no longer primarily reside within nationality. For Soysal, there is “a profound transformation in the institution of citizenship, both in its institutional logic, and in the way it is legitimated” (1994:139). In order to understand this new logic, she asserts that we must “go beyond the nation-state.” The sociologist outlines a “postnational model” of membership, where “universal personhood replaces nationhood, and universal human rights replace national rights” (Soysal 1994:142). Although international human rights instruments are not binding and often remain unsigned by immigrant-receiving nation-states, they “set norms,” are used by migrant organizations to construct claims in relation to the nation-state, and provide a way to publicize and legitimize migrant demands (Soysal 1994:149). While human rights still must be organized by and exercised within the nation-state, Soysal focuses on the ways that they are legitimated by a “transnational order” of international rights and conventions (1994:143).

Soysal’s work represents one end of a spectrum of scholarship that interprets the impact of migration on state processes. Her work has been widely critiqued; it often serves as a launching point for discussions of why postnational membership, while a lofty goal that is attractive to many theorists, largely remains a dream unfulfilled. For example, Peter Schuck points out that when migrants achieve civic participation and human rights, they are generally established through judicial systems and require a “transcendence of normal politics” (1998:203). Because these “rights” are not solidly anchored in the politics and institutions of nation-states, they are highly vulnerable to political reversal. The legal scholar is concerned that a discourse of human rights without institutional grounding is too “fragile” and “elusive” to be a firm source of protection for migrants (Schuck 1998:203). Christian Joppke (1998) finds it unusual that Soysal promotes guestworker status, a form of second-class citizenship. The immigrants she studies achieved a certain number of rights and benefits in countries, including Germany, when citizenship was based on the principle of jus sanguinis and thus very difficult to attain. Yet these “foreigners” were frozen in a permanent non-citizen status that limited their full ability to emerge as political actors in their country of residence and, at times, of birth.

In comparison to Soysal, Sassen provides a more measured yet rather hopeful perspective on the recent challenge to immigration regimes that are grounded in the “control and regulation” of “borders and individuals” (1998:6-7). The combined impact of international human rights regimes and discourses, the multiplication of political actors and ethnic lobbies, and the extension of rights to migrants (that are largely granted by the courts) makes it difficult for states to enforce harsh policies of border control and regulation. Because these developments are “fragmented” and “incipient,” and thus have not been fully captured at the formal level of institutional governance, Sassen views them as an emerging “de facto regime” of human rights (1998:8). For Sassen, human rights are primarily operationalized in nation-states through judicial proceedings, and through the activities of migrants and their advocates. These actors participate in the political process and challenge the legitimacy of laws that erode their human rights.

Because human rights are argued in various political spheres, other scholars look toward contexts beside the nation-state as potential sites for waging human rights demands. In their work on “world society” (1997:144), John Meyer et al. look at the impact of human rights as a “world discourse” on “subnational actors and practices” (1997:160). Because there is a connection between local actors and a “world culture” of human rights discourse, when human rights are denied at the federal level, there are many other potential “axes of mobilization” (Meyer et al. 1997:161). Policies may be implemented at “local units” such as cities and schools, where they are accompanied by calls for national action (Meyer et. al. 1997:161). Keck and Sikkink (1998) look in yet another direction. Transnational human rights networks that link domestic NGOs to regional and international intergovernmental organizations, foundations, and governments have sometimes succeeded in placing pressure on countries to end human rights abuses.

In the case of California politics, the judiciary has intervened in some of the most egregious cases of human rights violations of the undocumented and their families. In the case of Plyler v. Doe (1982 Pp. Docket: 80-1538, Vol. 457 US 202: US Supreme Court), the Supreme Court found that there was no compelling reason to exclude undocumented children from K-12 education. Most of Proposition 187 was overturned in California’s state courts, once again protecting the ability of undocumented to receive public education and allowing prenatal care for women without green cards. Theorists including Sassen (1998) and Schuck (1998) might have predicted these outcomes. The international regime of human rights helped activists and legislators such as Cedillo conceptualize the needs of the undocumented in California, mobilize the grassroots, and obtain publicity through the news media (including the aforementioned article I received in my seminar). These rights claims were sometimes communicated from the base to elected officials, including Governor Gray Davis, through instruments such as petitions. These findings also concur with the work of theorists such as Sassen (1998) who point to the deployment of human rights regimes by a multiplicity of political actors within the nation-state.

However, the continuing challenge is to understand the extent to which an emerging “de facto” human rights regime (Sassen 1998:8) is capable of transforming specific state apparatuses. For example, how are human rights operationalized through state policies? In order to do this, it is important follow the ways that specific struggles of the undocumented that are framed as human rights, such as access to the California driver’s license, play out on the ground over time. I find that there are a number of necessary conditions and steps toward implementing what are perceived as the human rights of undocumented immigrant workers and their families at the legislature. Do the undocumented have political representation? Are these representatives willing and able to put forth their human rights claims? How are human rights claims converted into concrete policy proposals? How are these proposals argued legislatively? If they are translated into concrete policy, what compromises must be made? To what extent do legislative proposals still address activists’ human rights goals when they are introduced and amended? Do these policies become law? Do their results help empower human rights activists and the undocumented, or do they largely disappoint? How are new laws enforced? I begin to discuss these questions that may still not be resolved in the ongoing struggle for driver’s license access.

II. The Strange Dis/Appearance of the (Im)migrant in the

Legislative Struggle for Recognition

When Assemblymember Cedillo visited my policy seminar, I began to learn about his extensive political background that united social movement unionism, civil rights, and immigrant issues. This gave him the dedication and fortitude to take on the challenges of the driver’s license battle at the state legislature. Until 1996, Cedillo had served as general manager of SEIU Local 660, Los Angeles County’s largest local, with 42,000 public sector members. He then joined the United Food and Commercial Worker’s Union. As one of a network of Latino organizers of immigrants after the passage of Proposition 187, Cedillo directed the union’s non-partisan Campaign for Dignity and Civic Participation, which he described that day as a “campaign for citizenship and voter registration for the population that the UFCW was trying to organize.”

Next, the labor leader ran for State Assembly in 1998 to represent the 46th Assembly District. This district in downtown Los Angeles included Pico Union, the home of the largest Central American community in the U.S. It also incorporated Japantown, Chinatown, and most of Koreatown, the largest Korean community outside of Seoul. With its large population of immigrants, including the undocumented, AD 46 had the lowest rates of health insurance (Brown et al. 2001:68) and voter registration (Institute of Governmental Studies Statewide Database 2000) in the state.[2] Yet like the centers of other global cities, this

district was paradoxically a key site of economic and labor power. As the assemblymember informed us, “I have both one of the poorest districts in the state and also the financial center.” Within its boundaries were the business offices of major labor entities including the L.A. County Federation of Labor, Justice for Janitors, and SEIU Local 399 representing healthcare workers. Important immigrant rights and service organizations were also located in the district, including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of LA and the Central American Resource Center.

Cedillo considered it the duty of the district’s elected officials to represent all who lived there, regardless of their federal immigration status. According to his legislative director, Cedillo sought to understand the residents’ concerns by walking door-to-door during his primary campaign (interview, David Galaviz, April 19, 2001). When the aspiring legislator talked with the residents of Pico Union, he learned that the number one issue of concern to his prospective constituents was driver’s license access.[3] They or their family members needed one and they couldn’t get one because of their immigration status. Their cars were being seized and they were fined for unlicensed driving. Cedillo was confronted with a paradox: in order to grapple with a central policy problem in the district, he needed to extend a privilege to community residents who lacked lawful U.S. immigration status. The candidate pledged to make the restoration of driver’s license privileges a priority if he was elected to the state legislature.

At the Berkeley seminar, the assemblymember told us that he ran a primary campaign in several languages that was “pro-new immigrant voters” and “specifically against Governor Wilson,” the standard bearer for Proposition 187 and anti-immigrant California. In order to run against the Democratic Party establishment in Sacramento, he raised a few $100,000 from labor unions and another $100,000 in donations of $250 or less. But he informed us that a most important component of his victory was his army of one thousand volunteers-- “immigrants who could not vote but who were committed to send Gil Cedillo to Sacramento to fight Pete Wilson.”[4] Similar to the campaign for Simón Salinas in AD 50, immigrant workers in AD 46, regardless of their legal status, were mobilized by labor unions and community-based organizations to “get out the vote” and challenge anti-immigrant politics.

When Cedillo arrived at the California State Legislature, veterans cautioned the freshman assemblymember against introducing legislation to change the driver’s license laws. According to Galaviz, “a lot of legislators said don’t touch that issue-- it’s a losing proposition. The Proposition 187 wounds are still fresh” (interview, April 19, 2001). Furthermore, Cedillo “was in uncharted territory-- they were pushing the agenda on areas considered taboo” (interview, David Galaviz, April 19, 2001). He needed to move the driver’s license bill through three assembly and three senate committees-- and the assembly and senate floors-- for a total of 21 legislative votes. He also had to avoid a Governor’s veto.

The freshman legislator was also confronted with the pull between “policy” and “politics.” While a proposal may make excellent sense from a public policy standpoint, one must always be cognizant of the politics of the situation-- the way that a proposed policy will be received politically by voters. This pull is especially critical on issues related to immigrants, such as the driver’s license. Areas of particular concern to immigrants and persons of color often emerge as “wedge issues,” a term mostly used by Democrats (including Gray Davis) to describe the deployment of certain subjects in order to drive a wedge between voters and a party or candidate that they generally are inclined to support. The politics of the policy process also means that the lofty goals of Latino legislators and staffers are often curtailed. As Latino Caucus staffer James would tell me, “when you come to the legislature, you want to change the world. But then you learn that you have to compromise.”

Early on, the assemblymember also needed to make strategic decisions about bill language. In addition, he had to build arguments in favor of the legislation for varied audiences. These arguments needed to be persuasive in discussions with his colleagues, committee debates, and Spanish and English language media. “Our first strategy was that we needed to remove the visceral illegal, undocumented immigrant from the debate-- sway the debate in another direction. We wanted to put it in the public safety venue…. Our message is that] you should be more concerned with [the safety of the roads], not with their immigration status” (interview, David Galaviz, April 19, 2001). Thus, Cedillo’s office determined that the only way to assist the undocumented was to excise them from legislative and public discussions of the driver’s license.

This explanation is confirmed by a review of the arguments made by Assemblymember Cedillo as he moved his first driver’s license bill through the legislature. This version of the bill served all immigrants who lacked lawful U.S. status or a social security number. Early justifications offered in the midst of a booming of economy did not focus on “undocumented” or “illegal” immigrants.[5] Rather, Cedillo stressed economic opportunities for all Californians. As he had done in the article I had received on the human rights of workers, Cedillo redefined the “illegal immigrant” as a member of a broader community of working class immigrants upon whom the California economy relied. For example, in his testimony delivered on April 20, 1999 to the Assembly Transportation Committee, Cedillo reasoned:

The social security and lawful presence requirements have disabled working immigrant men and women from participating in the economy. All Californians should be allowed to make a living, care for their family, and contribute to California’s economic prosperity. The two requirements I am addressing in this bill have nothing to do with transportation and safe driving. In fact, they jeopardize public safety and create a pool of driver’s who cannot obtain auto insurance. This is clearly an issue of public safety, simple economics and fairness. [Office of Assemblymember Gil Cedillo, “Cedillo Bill to Restore Drivers Licenses to Immigrant Workers Clears Assembly Transportation Committee, press release, April 20, 1999]

Thus, Cedillo’s public reasons for supporting the bill began with “public safety” and continued with “economics,” two issues that benefit all Californians. His third justification offered for the bill is “fairness.” However, the legislator’s statement begins with a plea for “working immigrant men and women,” thereby challenging the division of immigrant communities into those who are “legal” and “illegal” and also redefining the undocumented as workers who contribute to the state economy (as opposed to public charges). Cedillo addresses their ability to make a living and care for their families, which approximates human and labor rights. Yet he frames this as something that the undocumented should be “allowed” rather than as a right. Furthermore, the political universe that the legislator addresses is neither the humanity nor the United States, both avoiding the sensitivity of their lack of U.S. lawful status and failing to invoke their human rights. Rather, he refers to “Californians” who should be able to support themselves and contribute to the state. In this complex manner, the legislator attempts to tailor privileges for the undocumented to the jurisdiction through acceptable policy and political arguments.

After AB 1463 failed in the Senate Transportation Committee, Cedillo pulled the bill on August 17, 1999. At that time, he issued a statement that focused on “benefit[s]” to “all Californians by enhancing public safety...” [Office of Assemblymember Gil Cedillo, “Assembly Member Gilbert Cedillo to Continue to Fight to Revise California Drivers License Requirements, press release, August 18, 1999]. In other words, the human needs or rights of the undocumented were further marginalized in his formal argument. “I withdrew this important public safety measure in order to guarantee its survival.... All drivers should be allowed to apply for a driver’s license for the simple reason that unlicensed drivers endanger everyone” (Office of Assemblymember Gil Cedillo 1999). Unfortunately, this public safety emphasis reinforced the dominant message that undocumented immigrants are a potential danger to California and society.

Assemblymember Cedillo faced a juncture where he needed to narrow his bills that helped undocumented immigrants in order for the bills to survive. The next year, the legislator introduced a new version of the bill to the Senate Transportation Committee that would only help quasi-legal immigrants, or persons who had pending applications for legal status with the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service (or later, the Department of Homeland Security). Thus, the undocumented also disappeared as potential beneficiaries of the new legislation. The revised bill passed out of the committee on August 8, 2000.

Nativo López, National Co-Director of the immigrant rights organization Hermandad Mexicano Nacional (Mexican National Brotherhood), later explained why he still hoped a restricted version of Cedillo’s bill would pass despite López’ dissatisfaction with the amendments. “[It] would move us incrementally in the ideal direction [toward the] result that we would like. [Cedillo] understands where we’re at. And we have an understanding of where he’s at in that process and we’re on the same side. We hope to get there eventually, together” (interview, July 9, 2001). However, would the passage of a law that helps the quasi-legal actually serve as a step toward aiding undocumented immigrants? Bills tailored in this manner have the potential to further politically divide the immigrant population. By “skimming the cream,” they may also leave elected officials and citizen voters with little incentive to pass other laws to assist those who are the most legally and politically vulnerable because they have no pathway toward lawful U.S. status.

Cedillo and López were part of a web of Latino activists who have been engaged in immigrant rights and labor struggle in Southern California over decades; this history, along with their communication about the bill’s progress and compromises, enabled López to trust Cedillo and his difficult decisions. However, many activists and immigrants who did not have this personal relationship to the legislator, were not privy to the reasons for concessions, or were taken by surprise by the amendments, viewed these choices in a harsher light. Greg Simons, a member of a network of immigrant rights activists, spoke of the legislative “pen strokes” that take the heart out of movements and rights claims (interview, June 6, 2001).

There were way too many compromises made in the bill, rather than just say it’s the right thing. Here it’s a movement as well, but it seems to me that the whole legislative process waters down things from this movement. Maybe it’s because we have a whole lot of new legislators because of term limits. It lets them, somehow, take away the spirit of the movement. You’re making all these exceptions-- by the time you get it through, who’s it going to help, and who will be left out? Those are pen strokes that really make a difference in people’s lives. [interview, June 6, 2001]

In the end, activists concluded that it is important not to be limited by the politics of the legislative process. While they may work toward the passage of legislation, they must mobilize based on a broader vision of immigrant rights. According to López, “You notice in the letters that we [Hermandad Mexicana Nacional] circulate-- it doesn’t even mention the Cedillo legislation. What we’re advocating for is a return-- a rollback to the DMV requirements of 1992…. And the reason that we crafted our letter that way-- that we are advocating that way-- is to show our dissatisfaction with the legislation that is being proposed. But in the same breath, we’re not going to oppose the legislation.” In the words of college student activist Margarita:

My thing is-- don’t concentrate around the whole process of the legislation.... Let’s move beyond this.... If we just look at what’s going on in the capitol, we ignore keeping that contact with the whole community. So I think [we should] organize the whole community on the issue.... To me, the politicians are because of the people. So if we are not organized down here, the politics cannot happen up there. So, I think a lot of times we get caught up in the politics. No matter how much [the legislator] is doing, if we are not organizing in the streets and taking over the streets, nothing is going to happen.

Thus, undocumented immigrants “disappeared” in certain compromise versions of these bills that only served those with quasi-legal status.[6] While this choice may have been preferable to no bill at all, the expunging of the majority of potential beneficiaries also created schisms in the immigrant rights community. The bills bore little relationship to a variety of initial rights visions, including an understanding of the plight of the undocumented as a human rights struggle. The legislation was misunderstood and mistrusted by some at the grassroots who had been inspired to action by the bills. While support for the bills weakened in Latino communities and organizing efforts decreased, activists maintained their broader understandings as they fought for disappointing and narrow legislation.

In keeping with his public safety strategy, Cedillo’s office promoted members of law enforcement and local government as the public face of the bill. According to Galaviz, “Because we took the immigrant issue away… in terms of testimony we needed labor, public safety, agriculture, business perspectives…. It just happened when we presented [the bill] that there were no Latino-- no immigrant-looking faces” (interview, April 19, 2001). Immigrants in need of the license were not called on to testify in legislative hearings. In particular, it was hoped that this strategy could blunt the opposition of vocal immigration restrictionists. This included certain legislators and groups such as the California Coalition for Immigration Reform that had promoted Proposition 187. According to Galaviz, this tactic represented a paradigm shift in immigrant legislation. “What had happened in the past is if you had an immigrant bill, you would only have immigrant advocates [there in support]. In order to make it not just an immigrant issue, we used other folks. Some say this was to give [the issue] credibility, but I say it was to [offer] more perspectives-- to broaden [the issue. Because it is] not just relevant to a subpopulation” (interview, David Galaviz, April 19, 2001). Thus, it was not enough to frame the driver’s license problem as one that impacted “immigrant workers” (rather than specifically the undocumented). The bill needed to be primarily associated with the most respected citizens of California-- even its law enforcers-- to counterweigh the specter of the “illegal alien.”

By the time the new version of the bill was circulating in August 2000, its endorsers included the California Police Officer’s Association, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, and the Maywood Police Department (California State Senate Rules Committee 2000). The prior year, an unlicensed driver had killed one of the officers of Maywood in an accident; city officials hoped that the bill’s passage would help avert such tragedies in the future. Maywood Police Chief Rick Lopez testified in Sacramento in support of the legislation. The city councils of South Gate[7] (Southeast Los Angeles) and Watsonville[8] (an agricultural city on the Central Coast), and the boards of supervisors of Los Angeles[9] and San Francisco Counties[10] also passed early resolutions or expressed their support for the bill.

Mayor Donald Lahr of Santa Maria, an agricultural city near Santa Barbara, wrote to Cedillo of the bill’s importance to his community. In his letter, the mayor highlights the crucial role of immigrant workers-- who are by inference

undocumented-- in the regional economy:

We have an ongoing problem with poorly trained immigrant drivers in our community, and the facts of the situation are obvious. How can these mostly agricultural workers get back and forth to work without driving? There are certainly no bus lines to the fields.

It is equally obvious that they cannot get a license or proper training under the existing law. They have little choice, but to break the law.

I would be happy to help your cause in any way that I can. [Mayor Donald Lahr to Assemblymember Gil Cedillo, April 25, 2000]

A third group of welcomed endorsements came from the commercial sector. These included the Agricultural Council of California, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce (California State Senate Rules Committee 2000). Cedillo portrayed the bill as a benefit to industries with a high percentage of immigrant employees such as agriculture, tourism, and food service. As Galaviz stated, “In order for businesses to make decisions, they need to have a high degree of certainty that the labor pool can drive to work” (interview, April 19, 2001). Because only licensed drivers may purchase auto insurance, the insurance industry also stood to benefit from a new law and registered their support.

Consistent with the strategy of placing its powerful backers in the limelight, the lists of supporters prepared by Cedillo’s office and included in their press releases began with law enforcement. Other endorsers were listed in the following order: local government, business, and labor. These rosters continued with NGOs and health and religious organizations. At the end, the petitions and individual letters that represented grassroots organizing efforts in immigrant communities were acknowledged. All these tactics represented attempts to counteract the influence of anti-immigrant forces, and they were deemed the best pathways toward success by many legislative professionals. However, they paradoxically kept the undocumented unidentified in legislative debates at the capitol building. Hundreds of affected immigrants came to the legislature with labor unions and community-based organizations to speak with their elected officials and attend hearings. Yet their relegation to the shadows of legislative arguments seemed to contradict the spirit of the organizing efforts of labor unions, community-based immigrant worker organizations, and even Assemblymember Cedillo’s office.

III. Paradoxes of (Im)migrant Rights Struggle in State Legislative Politics

As we have seen, numerous scholars have debated emergent regimes of human rights as possible sites of membership for immigrants, including the undocumented, in relation to the state. However, we mostly understand this phenomenon at the level of theory and beliefs. We know much less about the ways that these human rights struggles actually unfold on the ground. I have teased apart some of the conditions that were necessary in California for the undocumented to receive legislative advocacy. This state is a major destination of undocumented immigrants, and the driver’s license struggle represents an important attempt to enter the “taboo” area of legislative struggle for their rights. Thus, there is much to learn about the potential to operationalize the human rights of migrant workers and their families from California’s driver’s license politics. As I previously mentioned, I found that there are a multitude of conditions, steps, and obstacles toward their enactment. I also summarize some of the paradoxes that I encountered in the struggle for undocumented workers’ human rights at the legislative level.

The undocumented, who are by definition ineligible to vote and outsiders in the nation-state where they reside, first needed political representation. In the case of Assembly District 46, unenfranchised immigrants did not break the law and vote. However, they participated with labor unions and community-based organizations in electoral mobilizations of their sparse adult friends, neighbors, and relatives who were U.S.-born or recently naturalized. As a result of citizenship and voter registration drives such as Cedillo’s Campaign for Dignity and Civic Participation, immigrant communities that traditionally had low voter turnout and had not received adequate political representation greatly increased their voting rates after Proposition 187. In this way, they were able to “elect” leaders like Cedillo who truly represented their interests. This form of voter mobilization occurred in various California districts with large Latin American immigrant.

These elected officials needed to become champions of the undocumented immigrant, and to spend most of their time and energy on the struggle for their rights.[11] Moving into this “uncharted” and controversial territory demands enormous energy and commitment, willingness to challenge politics-as-usual despite the advice of seasoned veterans, and creative policy and politics. Assemblymember Cedillo had to work by trial and error in order to develop new political models and paradigms. He needed a core of strong support at the legislature, in this case provided by members of the Latino Legislative Caucus. The maltreatment and invisibility of Mexican immigrant workers also had deep personal and political resonance for staffers and lobbyists of Mexican and Latin American ancestry from working class backgrounds; thus, Cedillo was able to form this core of legislative support. With the leadership of Assemblymember Cedillo and the outspoken advocacy of other Caucus members, many non-Latino legislators came to understand the negative impact of restrictive driver’s license laws on immigrant and non-immigrant communities, and voted for the bills.

Were human rights claims put forth at the legislature? Human rights laws belong to the sphere of international organizations and conventions, and they are enforced by nation-state signatories or the World Court. The role of a state legislator may be interpreted narrowly as dealing with subnational laws and rights. The United States has not ratified the UN Convention for the Protection of Migrant Workers; furthermore, the state legislature does not have jurisdiction over the human rights of immigrants. Remarkably, legislative districts and subnational governments that are the furthest from having jurisdiction over

human rights proved to be the most likely to demonstrate the political will to fight for these claims. This was true because of the physical concentration of undocumented immigrants in California and, more specifically, in certain political districts including AD 46 and AD 50. I also believe that voters are more likely to care about their neighbors in a smaller-scale political unit. The question of undocumented immigrants’ access to driver’s licenses was not a distant or theoretical issue at the legislature and in districts. It had very concrete impacts on local governments, road safety, and on the friends, family members and employers of immigrants denied the license.

Thus, some elected officials in California were compelled to address the human rights of the undocumented when they were disregarded at the federal level. They did this by introducing bills, such as ones to restore driver’s license privileges, which challenged the illegalization of the undocumented immigrants. These bills addressed narrow legal issues that were under California jurisdiction and did not appear to be connected with human rights. However, they deeply resonated with immigrants who objected to the indignities of being denied a means of lawful physical mobility to get to work and feed their families. Organizers translated this grassroots expression into human and labor rights claims, which were subsequently converted by Assemblymember Cedillo into specific legislation.

A discourse of human rights circulated regarding the driver’s license, both within and outside of the legislature, which was largely promulgated by immigrant activists. Examples of this surfaced in petitions circulated by organizations including the San Joaquin Valley for Immigrant Rights and Voluntarios de la Comunidad (Community Volunteers) of San Jose. This activist rhetoric helped mobilize immigrants and energize legislative advocates; thus, I believe it had important organizing and emotive effects. However, legislative professionals rarely framed the driver’s license in terms of human rights in capitol debates. Elected officials, including Cedillo, addressed various audiences about the driver’s license and crafted numerous messages about the bill depending on the listeners. Assemblymember Cedillo was faced with the challenge of appealing to fellow legislators of various ethnicities and political persuasions, immigrant rights and restrictionist activists, and the governor (who represents the interests of the entire state). He needed to propel his bill through multiple legislative committees, keep the movement energized and optimistic, negotiate with the governor, and ward off restrictionists.

Immigrants’ human rights largely disappeared in legislative arguments made by Cedillo and other legislative professionals. In public debates, the driver’s license issue was projected as matter of public safety and economic growth and stability for all Californians rather than as an “immigrant issue.” During the height of the economic boom of the late 1990s, they emphasized the contributions of immigrant workers to the economy. This represented an attempt to redefine undocumented immigrants from “illegal aliens” and public charges to crucial laborers. While arguments for their rights as workers conformed to neoliberal discourse and were more effective than human rights claims, they also had significant drawbacks. Economic justifications were vulnerable to remedies tied to work status; these would leave the undocumented and family members without the right to drive when they are unemployed, and even more narrowly, outside of the act of commuting to work. Even such arguments were marginalized as the economy worsened and jobs became scarce. As the legislator encountered roadblocks, his message was increasingly narrowed to appeal to his opponents. His office attempted to “remove the visceral illegal... immigrant from the debate” by making law enforcement its public face. Thus, after the human rights of immigrants disappeared from the debates, pro-immigrant forces attempted to remove the “immigrant” from the debate. Ironically, undocumented immigrants became invisible in the rhetoric and substance of a struggle for their recognition and visibility.

In addition to being marginalized in political oratory and hearings, the undocumented were cut from certain versions of the legislation. When Cedillo was unable to move his bill forward with his legislative colleagues, he crafted a compromise to “save” it. Cedillo and other members of the Latino Caucus considered restoring driver’s license privileges to all Californians regardless of their immigration status “good policy” for the state; however, political conditions resulted in the excision of undocumented immigrants from the bill.

However, the restriction of bills to cover only quasi-legal immigrants also had negative political consequences. Because this version of the bill required DMV employees to have detailed knowledge of highly complex federal immigration classifications, it had the potential to further convert California’s civil servants into experts and enforcers of federal immigration laws. Furthermore, narrow legislation left both immigrant rights activists and restrictionists unhappy-- and energized none. While organized labor did not formally oppose restricted versions of the bill, few unions actively mobilized for them. The driver’s license bill was converted from an incipient movement to another disappointing piece of compromise legislation. Much of the power of the bill to address human rights was considered lost. While narrow bill versions provided a measure of political safety for legislators, it was difficult to create political momentum around them.

Alienating undocumented immigrants was also politically costly; it deenergized labor unions and Latino activists that were active in electoral politics. It was crucial to keep the “movement” going in order to gain momentum to challenge politics-as-usual and make headway on the human rights of undocumented immigrants. Furthermore, it is not clear that narrowing the bill to assist quasi-legal immigrants only was enough to blunt political opposition. While the Governor and legislators learned about and came to understand the differences in the scope of these policies, I believe these changes made little difference to English language journalists, native voters, and restrictionist forces. Paradoxically, when the bill was expanded to reincorporate the undocumented, political and labor momentum was restored. The governor signed an expansive bill in 2003, only to be recalled from office. The fledgling driver’s license bill became the target of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign, and it was dramatically repealed soon after he was sworn into office.

In sum, it was exceedingly difficult to maintain a struggle for the human rights of the undocumented at the California State Legislature despite the best of intentions and substantial support from segments of the Latino population, organized labor, immigrant rights organizations, and more unexpected fronts including business and law enforcement. Ultimately, it was easier to mobilize enough voters against immigrants to defeat the measure, especially in the climate of fear following September 11, 2001. In order to bring recognition to undocumented immigrant workers, Assemblymember Cedillo decided that he needed to make them invisible on a number of fronts. They were marginalized in hearing testimony, they disappeared in political rhetoric, and sometimes they were even cut from legislation. Mexican immigrants constantly appeared and disappeared – or “shimmered” (Coutin 2000; Coutin et al. 2002)-- in driver’s license policy and politics. While this quality of the legislative struggle for the undocumented was based on exceedingly difficult political conditions, ultimately, I fear that it contributes to the budding cynicism of some of our newest political actors and endangers their future civic participation.

Citations

Andreas, Peter

2000 Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Appadurai, Arjun

1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Brown, E. Richard, Ying-Ying Meng, Carolyn A. Mendez, and Hongjian Yu

2001 Uninsured Californians in Assembly and Senate Districts, 2000. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, May.

California State Senate Rules Committee

2000 Third Reading: Bill # AB 1463. Sacramento: report prepared by the Office of Senate Floor Analyses, August 25.

Coutin, Susan Bibler

2000 Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Struggle for U.S. Residency. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler, Bill Maurer, and Barbara Yngvesson

2002 In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization. Law and Social Inquiry 27(4):801-44.

De Genova, Nicholas P.

2002 Migrant "Illegality" and Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:419-447.

Institute of Governmental Studies Statewide Database

2000 Report on Minority Registration from the 2000 General Election. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.

Joppke, Christian

1998 Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink

1998 Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Meyer, John W., John Boli, George M. Thomas, and Francisco O. Ramirez

1997 World Society and the Nation-State. American Journal of Sociology 103(1):144-82.

Nevins, Joseph

2002 Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the "Illegal Alien" and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.

Office of Assemblymember Gil Cedillo

1999 AB 1463 (California Driver's Licenses): History and Past Requirements. Sacramento, CA.

Prillwitz, Jeremy D.

1998 Assemblymember Gil Cedillo: Newest Legislator Working to Protect "Basic Human Rights." Capitol Weekly, March 23: 1,6.

Sassen, Saskia

1996 Losing Control?: Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press.

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1998 Globalization and its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money. New York: New Press.

Schuck, Peter H.

1998 Citizens, Strangers, and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Soysal, Yasemin

1994 Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago.

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[1] The United States and Mexico are two distinct examples of the extreme difficulty of enforcing human rights within nation-state contexts. The U.S. has not joined numerous human rights conventions; for example, it is one of only two countries (with Somalia) that have not ratified the UN Convention for the Protection of the Child. Along with every other nation-state that primarily receives migrants, it has failed to sign on to the UN Convention for the Protection of Migrant Workers and their Families. Furthermore, the U.S., under the Bush administration, refuses to participate in the new International Criminal Court responsible for prosecuting gross human rights abuses; it charges that the court is a threat to national sovereignty. In the case of Mexico, Vicente Fox pledged early in his administration to bring Mexico into compliance with international human rights standards. This gesture was made in light of the country’s long history of human rights violations, including the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre and the military suppression of the 1990s Chiapas uprisings. While Mexico has ratified many international treaties, these human rights have not been practically integrated into government laws and processes (Acosta 2004). There has been little change in state branches, such as the judiciary, that should serve as arbiters of human rights yet have historically been among their primary violators (Acosta 2004).

[2] In 2000, 40% of the residents of AD 46 up to age 64 were uninsured. This includes 36% of those through 18 years old (Brown et al. 2001:68). This compares to a national average of 17% and 14%, respectively (Brown et al. 2001:11).

[3] This is particularly ironic because the law that restricted driver’s license access to persons with lawful U.S. resident status in the early 1990s was coauthored by the district’s former assemblymember, Louis Caldera (1992-7).

[4] Although Wilson was “termed out” and was not running for state office, his name had become synonymous in Latino communities with anti-immigrant agitation and was deployed in electoral politics.

[5] During his legislative career, Cedillo authored four driver’s license bills. AB 1463 was introduced on February 26, 1999 and vetoed by Governor Gray Davis on September 29, 2000. AB 60 was introduced on December 4, 2000 and vetoed by the Governor on September 30, 2002. SB 60 was introduced on January 15, 2003, signed by Governor Davis on September 5, 2000, and repealed in December 2003. SB 1160 was introduced on February 2, 2003 and is pending at the time of this writing. Another related driver’s license bill, SB 371 (Solis), was vetoed by Governor Davis in 1999.

[6] Note that two narrow versions of the driver’s license bill (AB 1463 and AB 60) that only assisted quasi-legal immigrants were vetoed by Governor Davis in 2000 and 2002. Cedillo’s subsequent bills were broadened to incorporate the undocumented.

[7] South Gate Mayor Hector De la Torre to Asm. Gil Cedillo, letter, September 27, 2000.

[8] Resolution No. 182-00 A Resolution of the City Council of the City of Watsonville Supporting the Passage of Assembly Bill 1463 (Cedillo) Entitled “Vehicles: Social Security Number: Driver’s Licenses: Identification Cards,” June 28, 2000.

[9] Violet Varona-Lukens to Asm. Gil Cedillo, letter, September 20, 2000.

[10] Resolution No. 303-00 Assembly Bill 1463 California Driver’s License Requirements, April 21, 2000.

[11] While I focus on the driver’s license here, many of these conclusions are also relevant to Asm. Firebaugh and the struggle for higher education access for undocumented youth.

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