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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Arizona Denies Licenses|to ‘Unlawful Aliens’

PHOENIX (CN) - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed an executive order Wednesday denying driver's licenses and taxpayer-funded public benefits to "unlawful alien applicants" allowed to remain in the U.S. for the next two years under the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

"The issuance of Deferred Action or Deferred Action USCIS employment authorization documents to unlawfully present aliens does not confer upon them any lawful or authorized status and does not entitle them to any additional public benefit," the order states.

According to the order, about 80,000 applicants would be allowed "improper access to state or local public benefits, including state issued identification, by presenting a USCIS employment authorization document that does not evidence lawful, authorized status or presence will have significant and lasting impacts on the Arizona budget, its health care system and additional public benefits that Arizona taxpayers fund."

Illegal immigrants under the age of 30 that are students, graduates, or military veterans and came to the U.S. before the age of 16, may apply for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Applications are deferred deportation if accepted into the program.

"She is perpetuating the myth that deferred action applicants are somehow submitting fraudulent documents and that is completely false," said Alessandra Soler, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, in a statement. "Not only is she singling out young people who are eligible for deferred action, but she also is excluding other categories of non-citizens who are authorized to be in the country, including victims of domestic violence, from obtaining state-identification while their immigration applications are being processed."

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