The offices of the Secretary of State and Attorney General will look into whether Gov. Susana Martinez misused campaign funds for paying for radio ads pushing for the repeal of the law that allows illegal immigrants to get drivers licenses.

Secretary of State Dianna Duran has said that she does not believe Martinez did anything wrong. Duran is the first Republican Secretary of State in New Mexico in decades.

“KSFR News and several advocacy groups asked for a formal ruling whether pre-election campaign funds can be used to influence legislation after the elections,” KSFR reported.

“We do believe that the money that was spent on the radio ads, that it does constitute an allowable expense under the Campaign Reporting Act,” Duran told KSFR in a radio interview.

A spokesman for the office of the Attorney General told the AP yesterday that his office is looking into the legal question.

This week, the good government group Common Cause New Mexico and the immigrant rights’ group Somos un Pueblo Unido called for the investigation, and public radio station KSFR asked Attorney General Gary King to look into the question if unspent campaign funds for a political can be spent on lobbying for legislation.

The Independent’s Trip Jennings moderated a panel of experts, while KUNM’s Jim Williams posed questions from the studio audience and readers watching the webcast. Here’s a summary of the conversation.

“New Mexico has some of the most sensible immigrants’ rights policies in the country,” said Marcela Diaz, an immigrants’ rights advocate with Somos Un Pueblo Unido.

Although violence is a problem on the border, New Mexico is different from other states for reasons including our low population density, state Rep. Dennis Kintigh, R-Roswell, a former FBI special agent, told the forum attendees.

“In many ways, the New Mexico border has less of a trafficking culture…because we don’t have the same populations so close to the border,” Rep. Kintigh said. “There is a huge open territory between the border and the developed areas…so there’s a disconnect there from the true border.”

Despite the focus on violence in border states, Diaz said immigrants are not causing crime, pointing to a recent Cato Institute report that said “foreign-born (both legal and illegal immigrants) are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born.”

But Kintigh said it’s important to acknowledge that residents along the border to have legitimate concerns about the safety of their families.

We have to ask: “What value do we place on the life of the lawful residents of this country?” Kintigh said.

Many immigrants don’t want to stay permanently; rates are steady

Even though we’re talking about it more, immigration has not skyrocketed across the board, said Prof. DiGregorio.

“Really, immigration has increased over a series of decades but in recent years it’s actually been declining…our rates today are pretty comparable to historic rates if you look at the history of the country,” he told the panel.

And many immigrants only want to come and stay long enough to earn enough money to achieve goals at home.

“We like to think people are all coming here because they want a piece of the American dream and they want to live here permanently. … Usually the dream is: ‘I’m going to go there…save up money…send that home over time…and the end is, I go back home and maybe open up a little store or something,’” Diaz said. Immigrants save much of their income and send it home, she noted.

Kintigh said that pattern of migration should be taken into account when developing immigration policy. And later, Diaz applaunded Kintigh for calling on Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

“So many individuals wanted to go home for Christmas, or for the holidays…this is an area where I think the whole concept of the visiting worker needs to be looked at and addressed, so individuals can…come, pursue their dreams…and go home and open their own business,” Kintigh said as Diaz nodded.

“We don’t have a good enough policy to address the number of people who want to come in and go back. There has been historically a flow back and forth…but in the last 20 years we’ve seen a tripling of undocumented immigrants settling in this country and growing roots because they don’t have the opportunity to go back and forth,” Diaz said.

“How do we do this in an orderly, fair, respectful manner?” Kintigh asked. “One of the frustrations is hey, they jumped the line but there are others who have been waiting,” to immigrate legally.

But the lottery for legal immigration is less than 50,000 for a country of 300 million, DiGregorio said.

“People recognize that immigrant community members came in without documentation and we’re willing to do what the government is asking us to do in order to stay,” Diaz said, adding “all we’re asking for is a path for legal immigration.”

Drivers licenses for illegal immigrants

Moderator Jim Williams posed this question, asked by an audience member: “What’s wrong with every driver being licensed and having insurance, regardless of their immigration status?” prompting Rep. Kintigh to reflect on how driver’s licenses have evolved over the years.

“When I got my drivers license it was a piece of paper with my name and things on it. It didn’t have a picture, it wasn’t laminated and it wasn’t plastic. But drivers licences have changed,” he said, explaining that they’ve evolved into a vital piece of identification that tells law enforcement: ”Who are you?”

“In the end we have drivers licenses so we know people can drive safely and we have their records,” Diaz said, noting that lawmakers voted to give drivers licenses to non-citizens for public safety reasons.

“We want to bring immigrants into society…so they can go to banks and they’re not stuffing money under mattresses,” DiGregorio said.

But Kintigh brought the conversation back to driver’s licences and asked why it’s not OK for local law enforcement officers to ask for proof of citizenship.

“That would certainly be an anti-public safety measure,” Diaz said.

But why not allow law enforcement to ask everyone where are you from, Kintigh wanted to know. Why is it not OK to ask, “What are you doing here?” Kintigh said, gesturing to DiGregorio.

“I don’t get asked that. I’m white,” DiGregorio said.

The Independent asked Democrat Diane Denish and Republican Susana Martinez how they would address a potential rise in the state’s uninsured rate and the possible increase in non-licensed motorists on the state’s highways and thoroughfares if the state stopped issuing licenses to illegal immigrants.

Both have publicly come out in support of stopping the practice if elected as governor.

Neither answered the questions.

Public safety was a major reason given in 2003 for passing a law that opened up New Mexico drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants. Illegal immigrants who had drivers’ licenses would be guaranteed to understand our laws and would be able to buy car insurance, a practice that conceivably would help to reduce the state’s then-20 percent-uninsured rate, the argument went.

A driver’s license also created a driving record. Currently, any citation a motorist receives goes on his or her record, making it easier for authorities to identify serial DWI offenders, for example, said Michael Sandoval, director of the state’s Motor Vehicle Division (MVD).

The Independent sent the questions Wednesday asking the candidates for their ideas on how to address the potential consequences of a prohibition on illegal immigrants’ receiving state driver’s licenses.

Sidestepping the questions, Denish’s campaign instead seized on the opportunity to urge federal action to create federal immigration reform legislation.

“It is important that this issue, along with securing our borders, is part of a national debate on comprehensive immigration reform. It is well past time for a single immigration law, not a patchwork of laws and policies that differ from state to state,” said Denish’s spokesman, Chris Cervini.

Martinez’s campaign did not respond to The Independent’s questions at all despite her aides’ repeated reminders to reporters that the GOP candidate has the tougher position on the issue.

Denish has said she’d consider stopping the issuance of licenses going forward, but Martinez has said she wants to repeal the law, revoking the tens of thousands of the state’s drivers’ licenses already issued to illegal immigrants.

Currently around 80,000 foreign nationals have New Mexico driver’s licenses, but not all are illegal immigrants, making it difficult to determine the exact number of illegal immigrants with state driver’s licenses, Sandoval, the MVD director, said.

Martinez’s silence makes twice that her campaign has declined to answer questions submitted by The Independent, once on health care issues and this time on driver’s licenses.

Drivers licenses are part of larger immigration debate

Advocates of the law, including Gov. Bill Richardson, have said allowing illegal immigrants to get drivers’ licenses brings that population into the light and out of the shadows, creating a mutually beneficial situation for the state and the immigrants themselves.

“We can keep track of people’s driving records,” said Marcela Diaz of Somos un Pueblo Unido, an immigrants rights group. “Our community is taking a great leap of faith in coming forward and paying a lot of money, paying for licenses, registration. That security is very important to our community.”

“We are more secure,” Diaz added. “This is the tradeoff for the money we pay.”

At the same time the licensing program has battled cases of fraud.

In May the state Taxation and Revenue Department issued a warning about a criminal enterprise using residential addresses to create false documents to prove residency. Foreign nationals must provide several documents to qualify for a New Mexico’s driver’s license, including those that prove residency, say for example, a utility bill.

The warning came two days after a 47-year-old Albuquerque woman pleaded guilty to several felony charges in connection with providing false residency documents to foreign nationals applying to get New Mexico drivers’ licenses.

Meanwhile illegal immigration has again become a hot-button issue nationally, thrust to the forefront by Arizona’s passage this spring of the nation’s toughest immigration law. Arizona’s action has provoked not only a heated, roiling debate among supporters and detractors but also a court challenge from the federal government.

The history of the law

When the state passed the 2003 driver’s license law, about 10 states had similar laws on the books. That number has steadily dwindled to where now there are only three – New Mexico, Washington and Utah.

At the time New Mexico’s motor vehicle uninsured rate hovered around 20 percent, Sandoval said.

“Now it’s around 9 percent,” he said.

Sandoval couldn’t say with certainty that the 2003 law led to the decrease. Since the law’s passage, the state has passed other statutes that might have contributed to the reduction. A separate law passed in recent years prohibits motorists from canceling insurance after registering their vehicle, a bedeviling problem in the past. Every month the state crosschecks records to make sure vehicles are insured, he said. If a vehicle isn’t, the owner is notified that he or she has a certain amount of time to correct the situation. If they don’t their motor vehicle registration will be suspended.

The state looks at the vehicle, not at the person’s legal status, when performing the monthly motor vehicle insurance checks, Sandoval said, explaining why it’s difficult to attribute the uninsured rate reduction solely to the 2003 law.

But, he added, “I would have to think that (the 2003 law) helped.”

Diaz, the immigrant rights advocate, agrees.

“I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist to see that you have a population that wasn’t insured before,” Diaz said.

But Rep. Dennis Kintigh, R-Roswell, questioned the law’s effect on the motor vehicle uninsured state.

“Show me the data,” Kintigh said. “We don’t see any evidence of it. I see the indication that we still have a high number of uninsured motorists.”

Kintigh also questioned the security of the driver’s licenses given to illegal immigrants.

“Do we really even know who this individual is?” Kintigh said, referring to individual applicants.

Problems in issuing licenses

It’s rare to have questions about an illegal immigrant’s identity when he or she applies for a driver’s license, Sandoval said.

People without social security numbers — foreign nationals, including immigrants in the U.S. illegally — must present a valid passport or a valid Mexican ‘matricula’ produced from that country’s consulate in El Paso or Albuquerque, along with two proofs of residency.

With “a passport you go through a process. A matricula — you go through a process,” he said. “…Regardless of whether a person has a SSN or not, it’s very rare that we find fraud where someone is pretending to be someone else. Where issues start to happen – and it doesn’t happen very often – is in the proof of residency.”

The case of the 47-year-old Albuquerque woman recently convicted on several felony counts of providing false proof of residency documents offers an example.

Rosa Pardo-Marrufo was arrested in April of 2009 and indicted on over 100 counts, according to a news release from the state Taxation and Revenue Department, which the Motor Vehicles Division falls under.

Her scheme involved providing false residency documents to foreign nationals, many of them from Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, the release said. The individuals seeking New Mexico driver’s licenses paid Pardo-Marrufo anywhere from $700 to $900 for the documents, according to the department.

Pardo-Marrufo is scheduled to be sentenced this week, and will face a maximum of 10 years in prison.

No system is failsafe, said Sandoval, acknowledging that problems occur. But he added that fraud schemes are not unique to the foreign national community. Fraud schemes involving drivers licenses also occur among U.S. citizens, he said. But whether they involve citizens or illegal immigrants, they’re rare, he said.

And safeguards are in place to protect against them becoming widespread, he added.

A 45-day window between when the MVD issues a temporary driver’s license and mails out a permanent one gives state tax fraud investigators time to verify information on the documents provided, Sandoval said.

Investigators look for people claiming to live at the same address or attempts to copy a bank statement by whiting out a name and presenting a false document, Sandoval said. Another red flag is separate applicants handing in within a week of one another a gas bill with the same account number.

Sometimes fraud investigators will go out to an address given to see if it’s a warehouse or abandoned, he said.

“They don’t do it for every single person, but if there’s a reason to believe that the information is incorrect,” he added.

The Arizona statute, signed into law last week, would empower police in Arizona to stop people they suspect are illegal immigrants and demand proof of citizenship. The law has flared up another vociferous discussion in the ongoing national debate over immigration. But it also has provoked a sense of concern, and even fear, among local immigrants – and others — living in New Mexico, said Marcella Diaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, the organizer of Saturday’s march.

“We have been receiving calls from folks asking, ‘How is this going to affect us? Should we not travel into Arizona?’” Diaz told the Independent.  “One message was from a mother. She said ‘My daughter is a student at the University of New Mexico and she is traveling into Arizona. What does she need to take? What documentation?’ I don’t know whether this person was undocumented or not.”

The organization hopes that upwards of 500 people attend Saturday’s march, which begins on the corner of N. Guadalupe St. and Paseo de Peralta and will end at the Plaza with a rally and interfaith ceremony.

Among the speakers scheduled after the march will be individuals from Arizona, Diaz said.

Arizona’s new statute, which is the nation’s strictest anti-immigration law, has produced the usual battle lines, with some critics predicting that it would lead to “racial profiling” while some supporters saying it’s Arizona’s response to a failed national immigration policy.

The law, and the debate it galvanized, has led some in Congress to push for a debate on overhauling the country’s immigration laws sooner rather than later while also provoking questions as to whether the law would stand up to judicial review.

In New Mexico, the law has generated a discussion as well, with Gov. Bill Richardson very publicly counseling Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week to veto the law. She signed it Friday.

Meanwhile, gubernatorial candidates from both political parties in New Mexico have come out with positions on the law.

The legislation was sponsored by state Rep. Nate Cote, D-Las Cruces, HB 428. It describes profiling as the “practice of relying” on such factors as ethnicity, race, language, disability, sexual orientation or religion in “selecting a person to subject to routine or spontaneous investigatory activities.” It also forbids the use of such factors in determining the scope of an investigation.

“Part of what makes New Mexico so great is our rich diversity and this bill honors that heritage and reflects our ideals,” Gov. Richardson said in a statement. “Profiling perpetuates negative stereotypes that are harmful to our families and communities and undermines law enforcement by eroding confidence in our criminal justice system.”

A fact sheet about the bill on the Web site of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a Santa Fe-based immigrant rights group, says the term “bias-based policing” is preferable to “racial profiling” in crafting legislation.

The term bias-based profiling is preferred over “racial profiling” to provide a more inclusive definition of individuals who could experience a bias when interacting with law enforcement.

Bias-based profiling usually refers to a police-initiated traffic stop. Bias-based policing may occur in other contexts as well, however, such as customs searches, police-initiated pedestrian stops, DEA activities, and national parks enforcement. More generally, bias-based profiling can be thought of as the inappropriate use of public authority when interacting with minorities.

The bill directs law enforcement agencies to develop policies, procedures and training protocols to prevent profiling from occurring.

Interestingly, Richardson signed the bill on the very day that the Pew Hispanic Center released a report showing that Latinos have less confidence than whites that they will be treated fairly by police and the courts. And, the study found,  more than half (56 percent) of Latinos say they or someone in their immediate family member has come into contact with the criminal justice system in the past five years.

Affordable housing and financial literacy are always issues for undocumented immigrants who may not speak English fluently and may be suspicious of the federal government. But contrary to what you might think, the mortgage collapse has not driven the state’s immigrant community into mass foreclosure and bankruptcy, according to Marcela Diaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a Santa Fe-based immigrants-rights organization.

“There are a lot of undocumented immigrants, especially in the south side of Santa Fe, who are having a hard time paying for their mobile homes because they did get higher-interest subprime loans,” she said. She then cited several factors that make New Mexico a relatively safe place for immigrants without the proper paperwork.

For one thing, she said, the state tends to take a “more sensible and humane approach” to immigration policy. This is in part because the immigrants comprise a small and close-knit community that shares a common culture with the general population. According to statistics from the Pew Hispanic Center, New Mexico’s undocumented immigration population ranks 28th in the nation, behind California, Illinois, Iowa and Texas among others.

“New Mexico is a majority Latino state,” Diaz said. “We already have something in common.”

Immigrants who come to New Mexico do so to join established families, Diaz said. Unlike other communities where they may seem like an unwelcome and off-putting invasion, in New Mexico immigrants are likely to be accepted because they are relatives.

Also bolstering the immigrant community is that overall the state has seen less of an impact from the economic crisis.

As reported earlier, New Mexico is a good place to ride out a recession.

“All of the states around us — like Colorado, Arizona and Nevada — are in declining housing markets, but not us,” said Erik Nore, director of homeownership for the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority. “It’s not a bad time to own a house here.”

Nore credited the New Mexico Home Loan Protection Act, passed in 2003, with creating a buffer. The act defines what a high-cost loan is and sets a threshold for mortgage rates, he said.

“We really dodged a bullet,” he added, noting that the act passed before the mortgage crisis hit.

Furthermore, undocumented immigrants who pay taxes and have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) are able to legally open checking and savings accounts, start lines of credit and apply for home and car loans. Nationally, both Bank of America and Wells Fargo began offering banking services to individuals with a picture I.D. from the Mexican consulate and ITINs several years ago.

Guadalupe Credit Union in Santa Fe fills a niche in the community with a 100 percent bilingual branch. Members of its staff teach a financial literacy course to English as a Second Language (ESL) students at Santa Fe Community College and the credit union has other outreach programs that benefit under-served members of the community, including many immigrants.

Winona Nava, CEO of Guadalupe Credit Union, said she had one member voice concerns about the credit union offering ITIN loans to illegal immigrants.

“Santa Fe is a pretty inclusive community and no one is judging any of the members,” she said.

“It’s not like we had members closing their accounts because of it,” she added.

And Alejandra Seluja, a senior loan officer at Guadalupe Credit Union, noted that undocumented immigrants may be more likely to open banking and credit union accounts during times of economic and political uncertainty.

“If they kept their money at home and someone were to break into their home, or if they had to leave the country, they would lose it,” she said. “But if it’s in a credit union, they know it’s insured and they can access it.”

Giving these immigrants access to checking and savings accounts and offering them ITIN loans remains controversial, particularly during an election season marked by occasional anti-immigrant erruptions. But such pro-immigrant policies are not illegal.