A single mother battling cancer and a victim of domestic abuse are among immigrants who qualify for Arizona driver’s licenses but have been unlawfully denied, a group of advocacy organizations claimed in a lawsuit filed in federal court this week.

Arizona’s policy of denying licenses to some immigrants who have been granted deferred action, or protection from deportation, is unconstitutional, says the lawsuit brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Immigration Law Center and the Ortega Law Firm.

Arizona is the only state that has denied licenses to people under the deferred action program who used to be eligible to receive them, said Victor Viramontes, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs include five Arizona immigrants who are recipients of a years-old program granting some immigrants who are in the country illegally the ability to work and be protected from deportation. The state must give them licenses because they are lawfully present in the country, the lawsuit filed Monday says.

Daniel Scarpinato, a spokesman for Gov. Doug Ducey, said Tuesday that state lawyers were reviewing the lawsuit and that he could not immediately answer specific questions about the policy.

Lawsuit follows win for ‘dreamers’

The suit was filed less than two years after a federal judge forced the state to grant driver’s licenses to “dreamers,” recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, following a long legal battle that began when then-Gov. Jan Brewer issued a directive banning them.

DACA is the President Barack Obama program that protects youths who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children from deportation while allowing them work. Immigrants who were younger than 31 in June 2012 and who came to the U.S. before turning 16 qualify for the two-year permits, which must be renewed. Arizona licenses for DACA recipients also have to be renewed every two years.

Brewer in 2012 issued an order banning DACA participants from obtaining licenses even though the state had previously allowed other deferred action recipients to get them. She argued that the decision grew out of liability concerns and the desire to reduce the risk of the licenses being used to improperly access public benefits.

Non-‘dreamers’ still shut out

The class of immigrants who have been granted deferred action for circumstances such as humanitarian reasons or being victims of crime were then banned from getting licenses after a federal court ruled that the state’s policy on DACA recipients was unconstitutional in part because it excluded one group of immigrants while including another.

The lawsuit names one woman who has cancer and cannot always get to her treatment appointments because she does not have a license, but lawyers say thousands of immigrants are affected by the revised policy.

Another woman is awaiting approval of a special visa for victims of domestic violence and has received deferred action in the meantime. She says she can’t get a better job because she can’t get a license.

Viramontes said the state should have started allowing all deferred action immigration recipients to get drivers licenses following the federal court ruling instead of letting some get them but denying the licenses for others.

“They should have stopped discriminating the minute this policy was declared unconstitutional, but they keep doing it,” Viramontes said.

Please visit the source link below to read the entire article.