It may not be the best of idea for Puerto Ricans to try to get a driver’s license in Georgia right now—especially if they use their birth certificates as proof of U.S. citizenship.
It seems that the Department of Driver’s Services in the state’s rapidly growing Lee County is confiscating all Puerto Rican birth certificates presented by the new drivers.
The DDS says 60 percent of birth certificates that they see from Puerto Rico are being used fraudulently and that they take the original certificate away from anyone applying for a driver’s permit to check on the legality of holder and document.
An investigator of the agency told a teenager and his parents that confiscating all Puerto Rico birth certificates was now standard policy.
The policy came to light when station WALB of Albany, Georgia reported on a 17-year-old trying to get his birth certificate back after applying for the license. The teenager is the son of Nilda Patton, a native of New Jersey, who happened to give birth to her son in Puerto Rico.
“After he took his test, they were going to give him his permit, that’s when they said, ‘oh by the way, we have to retain this document’,” Patton told the station.
Patton and her son were told that the certificate was being sent to the fraud unit to be investigated.
“For me, it really is discrimination against all Puerto Ricans,” Patton said.
The matter may soon be cleared up. Allen Watson, director of DDS for the state of Georgia, called the Pattons to apologize for the foul-up and said the birth certificate and driver’s permit were both in the mail.
The Georgia incident was one more of a growing number of island-born citizens caught up in similar stateside identity problems because of Puerto Rico’s recent birth certificate law.
The law, meant to tackle identity theft sparked by wholesale pilfering of Puerto Rico-issued birth certificates, will invalidate all birth certificates issued in Puerto Rico, starting July 1. After that date, those wanting proof that they were born on the island must apply to the Commonwealth government for a new birth certificate, which supposedly will be theft-resistant.
The law has caused confusion in several states. Most recently, a young island-born woman using her birth certificate to apply for a driver’s license in Iowa City, had to answer a series of questions about the island to prove she was indeed born there. Among other things, she had to identify the sound of the coquí frog before she was documented for legal driving around that mid-western state.
