[Arkansaspm]

ROGERS : 3 ticketed a day on no license

BY MARK MINTON
Posted on Sunday, January 20, 2008
URL: NWAnews.com :: Northwest Arkansas' News Source

ROGERS — Mendi Wisrock was waiting to pull out from a Wal-Mart parking lot when two cars collided nearby on the highway, starting a chain reaction that ended — with a jolt — at the bumper of her minivan.
Neither of the other drivers, both Hispanic, had a driver’s license.
Both had liability insurance issued by a company that caters to drivers who have only a foreign driver’s license. After conversations with her own insurer, Wisrock said she doubts that the unusual policy — a type that state regulators didn’t know was being sold in Arkansas — will pay for her damages.
That would leave Wisrock’s policy to cover the $ 1, 200 dent — sticking the 28-year-old clerk with a $ 500 deductible and perhaps higher premiums even though she wasn’t at fault in the Dec. 23 wreck.
Driving without a license is illegal, of course. But police in Rogers ticket an average of three motorists a day for not having one, according to data released last week.
Rogers Police Chief Steve Helms said he started tracking no-license tickets by ethnicity “because I knew we were seeing a lot, and the vast majority had Hispanic surnames.”
Last year, police ticketed 1, 249 drivers for driving without a license, and 1, 072, or 86 percent, were Hispanic. The numbers were similar in 2006.
The tickets underscore complexities in the debate over illegal immigration. Arkansas and other states are clamping down on illegal aliens by using computer databases to verify Social Security numbers and residency documents presented by people applying for driver’s licenses. That way, states avoid issuing cards that legitimize people who are in the country illegally. But keeping them from getting licenses limits their options for buying liability insurance that protects other drivers on the roads.
A review of the Rogers tickets show that some insurers are issuing auto policies to people who have driver’s licenses from Mexico or other Latin American countries but not to those with U. S.-issued driver’s licenses. Arkansas Insurance Department spokesman Alice Jones said the agency had no idea such policies were being sold in the state. No state law specifically prevents an insurer from selling a policy to someone without a U. S. driver’s license, she said, but she warned that the law authorizes insurers to cancel the policy if it turns out the owner of the car, or its regular driver, doesn’t have one. So the policies the immigrants are paying for won’t necessarily pay out in the event of a wreck.
CLAMPING DOWN The proliferation of immigrants driving without a license or insurance increases the risks and insurance costs for other drivers, but the problem of uninsured drivers is hardly unique to immigrants. In Arkansas, 14 percent of all drivers are uninsured, according to the Insurance Research Council, creating 1-in-7 odds that the at-fault driver in a wreck doesn’t have insurance.
Immigrants make up 4 percent of the state’s population, according to a recent study commissioned by the Little Rock-based Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Half of the state’s immigrants are estimated to be in the country illegally.
Driver’s licenses for illegal aliens have been a political flash point, however, sparked in part by a policy change last fall by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
The governor authorized the state to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, arguing that licensing the drivers would make the roads safer.
His move provoked such a backlash that Spitzer was forced in November to abandon the plan.
Most states, including Arkansas, have been moving steadily in the opposite direction — clamping down to keep illegal aliens from getting driver’s licenses.
Only a handful of states still issue driver’s licenses to applicants regardless of immigration status, according to Mike Barry, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group in New York.
The federal Homeland Security Department also is moving forward with a plan to require tamper-proof driver’s licenses. The Real ID initiative, which would impose nationwide standards for states to verify identities and legal status, has stirred controversy as states have objected to a federal mandate they call too expensive.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff allayed some concerns last week when he announced a nine-year timetable for states to comply.
Arkansas adopted key provisions two years ago with its own law requiring state motor vehicle clerks to verify names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. Clerks are already running the information through a federal Social Security Administration database, as Real ID will eventually require of all states, said Mike Munns, assistant state revenue commissioner.
Arkansas driver’s license applicants also must show evidence of legal immigration status, he said. The state checks those documents against a federal immigration database.
Munns couldn’t say how many illegal aliens have been blocked from getting driver’s licenses as a result of the new requirements. But he said the screens are a deterrent.
“We have turned away a number of people,” Munns said. LICENSES WITH CONDITIONS
The three-car wreck at the Wal-Mart parking lot presented a confusing scene, Wisrock recalled. She said she was the only one involved who spoke English.
“Five people, three vehicles — and I’m the only one with a driver’s license and insurance,” she said.
Wisrock had to file a claim with her insurer. It’s still pending. Her van hasn’t been fixed. She’s not yet sure exactly how the claim is going to come out, but she is not optimistic.
Calls to driver Mario Perez, 20, of Rogers, weren’t returned. The phone number that the accident report listed for the third driver in the wreck, Marcela Castro, 41, of Springdale, was not working last week.
Perez and Castro were both cited for no driver’s license, according to the report. Castro also was cited for no proof of insurance. They are scheduled to appear Feb. 4 in Rogers District Court.
Castro was driving a car owned by someone else, as was Perez, the accident report shows. It indicated that owners of both cars had bought liability insurance from Alfa Vision Insurance, although one policy had expired.
Several independent insurance agents in Northwest Arkansas sell policies of Alfa Vision, an insurer based in Brentwood, Tenn., that specializes in higher-risk drivers.
At American International Insurance, an agency based in Springdale, district manager Vicki Lorenzana said she sells Alfa Vision liability policies to people with driver’s licenses from many foreign countries.
“We get them from Mexico, from Peru, Argentina, Brazil,” she said.
The cost of the policies depends on the person’s driving record, age and other factors, she said.
Lorenzana added that Alfa Vision is not the only insurer selling policies to drivers with foreign-issued licenses. Some large companies also sell them, she said, rattling off household names such as Nationwide Mutual.
Nancy Smeltzer, a spokesman in Nationwide’s Columbus, Ohio, headquarters, said that in order to buy an auto insurance policy in Arkansas, a customer must have a valid U. S. driver’s license. But she added a caveat: “We will issue a policy to a driver with a foreign driver’s license, but there’s three conditions,” she said.
The driver must provide a letter detailing 35 months’ experience with a previous insurer; must provide a copy of the motor vehicle registration from the origin country of their license; and must get a valid U. S. driver’s license within six months or lose the policy.
John Pace, president of Alfa Vision, didn’t return a call Friday seeking information about the company and its rationale for selling policies to drivers who apparently can’t qualify for U. S. driver’s licenses or to say whether the policy would cover damages from the Wisrock wreck.
James King, Wisrock’s boyfriend, said his agent told him to forget it.
“It’s like an insurance policy that doesn’t exist,” King said. He said immigrant drivers without insurance is frustrating.
“One of my friends just went through the same thing we’re going through right now,” he added. “The guy came flying around a corner driving a Mustang. Totaled my friend’s Camaro. There was nothing they could do because the guy didn’t have insurance.”
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette randomly reviewed 10 Rogers accident reports in which the driver was cited for no insurance and was identified by police as Hispanic. In six of the reports, the driver was driving a car owned by someone living at a different address.
In three of the accidents, drivers or occupants of a car driven by a Hispanic driver left the accident scene or tried to leave it, the reports showed.
After a December 2006 wreck spun Christy Malone’s car around, Hispanics in the Mustang that ran into her made a cell-phone call. Another car arrived, and the group started unscrewing the license plate from the Mustang. Former Johnson police chief Dean Melton happened by and told them to put it back on. They did but then drove off in the Mustang, according to the accident report.
Rogers City Attorney Ben Lipscomb saw people bailing out of a car and leaving the scene after another wreck that occurred last May near City Hall. Lipscomb went in pursuit. He said took him two blocks to corral them.
Accident reports show that the vehicle was driven by a Hispanic woman with no driver’s license or proof of insurance.

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