Puerto Rico's Birth Certificate Controversy

Somehow, you knew it would come to this.  Under a new law, old birth certificates issued by the government of Puerto Rico would no longer be valid after July 1, 2010.  Foreseeing problems with this deadline, the government extended it by three months.  The claim then, as now, is that these birth certificates are prone to misuse and particularly identity theft.

A few days ago, the inevitable happened.  According to a report from the Associated Press, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles is not accepting the old birth certificates from those applying for a state identification card or a driver's licence.

In fairness to state officials and bureaucrats at the Ohio BMV, the old birth certificates are in Spanish, with translated language in parentheses.  It is also true -- at least as far as my old birth certificate is concerned, that the words "United States" appear nowhere within the certificate.

And yet, this story makes you feel oddly uncomfortable, especially if you happen to be, like me, a citizen of Puerto Rico, born on the island and residing in the continental United States.

The Lessons of Immigration Reform in Arizona for the Court

Late last week, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law one of the toughest, if not the toughest, immigration bill in recent memory. The one feature of the new law that has received a great deal of attention requires police officers to stop anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant. Those who fail to produce a driver's license or documentation showing their legal status could be arrested. What this means for brown people in Arizona should be painfully clear. What could it possibly mean to reasonably suspect that a person is illegally in this country, particularly in the Southwest, other than by the color of her skin, her facial features, his surname or accent? This bill is, in a word, "shameful."

Governor Brewer is mindful of these concerns. Yet, she argued while signing SB 1070 into law:

"I will NOT tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona. Because I feel so strongly on this subject, I worked for weeks with legislators to amend SB 1070, to strengthen its civil rights protections. That effort led to new language in the bill, language prohibiting law enforcement officers from “solely considering race, color, or national origin in implementing the requirements of this section."

I do not doubt for a moment the governor's sincerity. But how can the law not lead to racial profiling? In fact, it may be said that the law encourages precisely that, the targeting of people within the state on the basis of race.


Responses to the law have ranged from direct protest to promises of litigation. I think both are important. But the more I think about litigation as an alternative, the more I keep coming back to the upcoming nomination of Justice Stevens' replacement on the Court.