This commentary is by Jill Martin Diaz of Burlington, executive director of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project.
I am rarely in the position of sitting quietly while being advocated for in government proceedings as a litigator with many privileged identities. Sitting in a March 11 Senate Transportation Committee meeting was surreal.
People with more relational power than me debated the administrative costs and benefits of securing my ability to access public life by advancing section 20 of the Senate’s miscellaneous DMV bill to remove barriers to accessing ID. I had joined as a legal expert but stayed as the only attendee seemingly impacted by the issues at stake.
I felt emotional and vulnerable, insignificant and small as my community and I were discussed in aloof third-person. I deeply resonated with Sen. Becca White’s urgency that now is our moment to act — not only from my perspective as an impacted individual but as an attorney concerned about eroding rule of law.
Marginalized communities are under attack, but so are the fundamental rights governments are meant to protect for all. Vermont has historically leveraged New Federalism to secure rights despite federal rollbacks.
Now, as we rush to advance a suite of state human rights measures before the Statehouse’s crossover deadlines, I want to echo Sen. White: Now is our moment to safeguard fundamental freedoms before Vermont finds itself in a costlier, more reactionary and more resource-constrained lawmaking posture next term — in other words, before it’s too late.
My own Vermont-issued “X” gender marked ID removes a key barrier I face to showing up in the world as a whole person. It allows me to navigate professional, healthcare, financial and educational institutions and makes it safer for me to access emergency services and legal protections when I am in need. Legal transition through accessing ID has been as essential to my survival as social and medical transition. I wouldn’t be here advocating for immigrants’ rights without it.
That said, dense DMV websites, conflicting guidance, inscrutable automated phone systems and under-resourced frontline adjudicators made accessing ID a challenge, even for me as a benefits lawyer. Apparently, the DMV is not equipped to produce ID cards for people with Spanish last names.
After trying and failing to resolve my misspelled ID at the customer service level, to this day I am often required to produce my dead-name-laden name change order to explain the discrepancy between my passport and social security card and my Vermont driver’s license. This is a burden I can manage — but imagine if I were also English learning, or under-documented, or unsheltered, or underemployed like most of my gender nonconforming peers.
Immigration lawyers understand better than most how critical photo ID is for full and safe participation in society. Without it, people face unsafe working conditions, substandard housing and barriers to healthcare, education, banking and licensing.
For immigrants with barriers to accessing photo ID, simply driving around our border state is becoming a life-threatening activity, with no meaningful public transportation alternatives. Routine traffic stops by law enforcement — regardless of outcome — are serving as direct pipelines to encounters with ICE because federal law enforcement maintains access to Vermont’s arrest databases where enterprising officers can easily discover an arrestee’s home address. Yes, the Fair and Impartial Policing Policy prohibits Vermont law enforcement from affirmatively sharing information with federal agencies, but those protections only go so far.
This federal administration is successfully eroding trust in government and nonprofit services meant to protect marginalized people, including the Vermont Asylum Assistance Program (VAAP). Fear of violence, whether from emboldened extremists or institutionalized hate, pervades our public lives. Leaders in all branches of state and local government have a role to play in securing our full and safe participation in public life.
For example, the DMV can further minimize everyone’s burden to accessing and maintaining photo ID. How antithetical to Vermont Constitutional values would it be for an immigrant community member to face ICE detention and deportation because of a routine trip to the DMV, or worse, because we refused to administer a less burdensome customer service experience for marginalized system users?
Driving home from testifying in the House Judiciary the other day, I spoke with my mother (hands-free, of course). She is a first-generation American who now lives across the lake due to Vermont’s affordability crisis.
She described her mix of pride and dread about my public advocacy on behalf of VAAP’s asylum seeking clients, given my own vulnerabilities as a nonbinary trans person of recent immigrant descent. She hesitated before asking if I had renewed my passport before the inauguration… just in case. (Just in case I needed to flee.) I reassured her that I had, coincidentally, renewed it late last year and she choked out a “thank God” before bursting into tears.
Indeed, many of us are fortunate enough to still enjoy relative safety by virtue of our privileged identities, enough safety to stay public and stay loud. We still have half a session to go.
We must continue to educate our lawmakers and leaders about the ways we need Vermont’s support, big and small. After all, fundamental rights and freedoms aren’t just for marginalized people to assert and defend. Rights and freedoms belong to us all.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Jill Martin Diaz: A call to action as the Statehouse approaches crossover.