Real Uncertain

Real ID drama looms while federal facilities make their own rules about access for now

After watching a series of opening day ceremonies, then listening to pat-on-the-back introductions and to Gov. Susana Martinez’ lengthy state of the state speech, legislators are finally getting to work. Up next, they’ll see how their ideas fare in the session that lasts until March 18 and promises to tackle ethics and campaign finance reform, along with the balancing the state budget.

They're also entering an arena where already a number of proposals seek to address what federal officials say is the state's noncompliance with the Real ID Act.

The big drama is for the state's thousands of undocumented residents. Many of them have been driving legally in the Land of Enchantment but living illegally in the US.

The next month could prove pivotal in the highly politicized debate that has had a real effect, not just on the undocumented but on citizens alike. Up until a few weeks ago, no one knew whether they'd be able to use their New Mexico driver's licenses to board airlines or even enter a federal courthouse.

The situation isn't as urgent as it was around Christmas, in light of the federal government's recent two-year extension, in which it made clear that our licenses would still be valid for airplanes, provided travel is within the US.

But their use at federal facilities is still flapping in the wind. Sandia National Laboratories and White Sands Missile Range have turned license-wielding civilians back at their gates, and while Los Alamos National Laboratories is still accepting state IDs for visitors, they could just as easily follow suit.

Which is why Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard, D-Los Alamos, says she wants to solve the problem now. She's introduced a bill to grant the Taxation and Revenue Department the immediate right to distribute Real ID-compliant licenses to those who qualify, via the state Motor Vehicle Department.

"It's now or never," says Garcia Richard, some of whose constituents work at the lab as contractors and use their current state driver's licenses to gain entry. They're waiting for the hammer to drop at any moment, federal reprieve or not. "We just don't know what's going to happen next."

So with my newfound freedom, I decide to pay a visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory, which put an end to World War II with its atom bomb. Today, in addition to weapons projects, scientists there study everything from groundwater to water on Mars.

As I drive up the hill, I think about wildfires that have crept onto the lab property twice in the last two decades and how much everyone freaks out. The last thing you want is fire on the mountain. That, or a jihadist bomb.

After about a half-hour's drive from Santa Fe, I stop such musings as I come to a row of gates in front of LANL off NM Hwy. 501, a place I expected to resemble a future Trump checkpoint along the US-Mexico border.

I saunter right in, without even having to show any form of ID.

And I'm driving a beat-up pickup with a large tinted camper shell. But the guard waves me through. He forgets to ask me for an ID. I think I sidetracked him by telling him I was with the media and I was hoping to talk to someone in public affairs, but nobody was expecting me.

In his willingness to help, he just forgot. He tells me to report the Otowi Building. I park, walk downstairs, leave public affairs a message by dialing them from the reception desk there, wait about 15 minutes for a callback, and then scram.

But on the way out, I decide to use the restrooms on the second floor. Then I notice there's a cafeteria. Closed, dammit. But the back patio isn't, nor were the mountains, so I walk outside and took them in. It's hard to shut down the southern tail of the Rockies, ID or no ID.

And of course, there are signs everywhere that proclaim I'm under video surveillance, the logic always mystifying me, informing the very evildoers that they're being watched.

Kevin Roark, a spokesman with the lab, later tells me via email that the Otowi Building and the J Robert Oppenheimer Study Center are open to the public. But he cautioned that all visitors need to let LANL know they're coming, something I didn't do, and that they need to be escorted at all times, something I wasn't, and that they can't be wandering around the grounds, which I kind of did but just a little, inside an isolated area.

Technically, he says, visitors could be cited for trespassing, if they're not there on official business, which I was.

My point isn't to make LANL look bad, or me, for that matter.

The good news is I'm a US citizen, and both my parents were born on US soil, and my mother gave birth to me on the South Side of Chicago, her water breaking on the brand-new living room carpet, which makes me a terrorist in my own right.

But it also qualifies me for the US presidency more than Ted Cruz, at least at the moment.

So if I'm elected, I'd get rid of the Real ID Act and, since we're already being watched, put Big Brother to use by monitoring the Internet, which is often the source for homegrown radicalization. Leave the states and their citizens alone.

There are reasons why only 22 states so far have met federal standards and the rest are still working on them: It's complicated.

What's more, quite a few states disagree with the Real ID Act on principle, because the information on their residents will soon be shared in a national database.

And there's a reason why a dozen states allow their undocumented residents to legally drive: because it was the only solution in the absence of US Congress passing comprehensive immigration reform, which would have made all things uniform.

Now such weighty decisions are in the hands of the legislators in the Roundhouse, where Gov. Martinez, a Republican, has been hell-bent on repealing the state's rules on driver's licenses for those lacking proof of US citizenship. And, already, in addition to Garcia Richard's bill, three other ID proposals have been introduced in the House.

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