New Haven Independent

The city announced Wednesday that 5,151 cards have been issued to date. So who are the 5,151 who have received the card? What’s the future of the program, and of the Office of New Haven Residents, which administers it?

The short answer, according to Ana Winn, the office’s project coordinator, is to keep marketing the card and especially getting out the message that it has features that all New Haveners, not just immigrants, can benefit from.

And the main office where processing of the card takes place, off the atrium lobby of City Hall, has become a kind of social service referral office for a wide range of problems, ot just for immigrants and their issues.

“The media,” Winn (in the red on the photo’s right) said in the lobby of the Hill Health Center, where an outreach table was set up Wednesday morning to enable people to sign up for cards in their neighborhood, “conveyed the impression in the beginning that the card was for immigrants only. Not so. We have Yale professors, doctors, lawyers, some 600 Yale students who have signed up who don’t need the Elm City Card for ID but like it for its debit features, its ease with parking, and so forth.”

Apart from these numbers, few others are available about who the holders of the cards are, in part because there is an understandable reluctance to gather statistics for evident privacy reasons. That was in part the reason the card was created.

“However,” added Winn, “they are a diverse group from all over the city.”

Camelle Scott, a 2007 graduate of Yale and one of the clerks, along with Angela Vega (beside Winn in the top photograph), added that she could say some 400 children, defined as under age 16, are holders of the card.

But the program has hardly given up on its push to market to the immigrant community. The Office of New Haven Residents has a “mobile unit.” It is not to be confused with a bookmobile or a van, because there is no vehicle. The staff just takes itsequipment, including the camera for making the formal photographs, and moves out on a regular schedule of appointments at different sites.

On tap on Feb. 11 it will be at Centro San Jose on Grand Avenue, and on Feb. 13 at the offices of SAMA, the Spanish American Merchants Association, also on Grand.

Winn said she contacted these organizations specifically now as tax time is upon us. “I have arranged with them that they will accept the Elm City Residence Card as ID when they help people prepare their IRS forms.”

Also on tap will be more visits to area high schools, after mid-term exams are concluded.

Perhaps most interesting, according to Scott and Winn, is the way the office is functioning now not only as the processor of the Elm City Residence Card, but also as a referral office. Winn said that their 165 Church St. space provides residents, new as well as not so new, with information about hospitals, schools, child care. She said people come in, some 25 to 50, during the regular business day for information, often not card related.

“Recently a woman came in,” she said. “She was homeless and pregnant, at least three or four months, and she didn’t know where to turn. We were able to help her make contact with the shelter and other organizations.”

The staff, which consists of Winn, Scott, and Vega, is augmented as need be by volunteers and interns, such as UConn student Capri Frank (on the left in the top photo).

Another case in point — of the evolving social service function of the office — was taking place as Scott spoke to a reporter (pictured at the top of this story). This man, who preferred not to be identified, was sitting beside his wife as she applied for the card. He began to talk to Scott about a problem, actually what he started out describing as only a “concern.” He had had a procedure recently in a hospital. When he indicated he had no money for the bill, an employee said it might be turned over to a collection agency. If that happens the man might be deported.

“He experienced that,” Scott translated from the man’s Spanish, “as a general threat. That’s not right. So I explained to him that he has rights. Tiene derechos. I reminded him he did not have to volunteer information or answer questions without a lawyer being present if he did not want to. I reminded him that our Constitution offers its basic protections to persons, it says, not citizens only. Immigrants, in other words, have rights. Dispelling these kinds of fears is something else that we do.”

Scott, who grew up in El Paso and intends to go to law school to pursue social justice or immigration law as a career focus, said for her this is a labor of love and passion. “I just don’t see why people should be mugged because they have no alternative but to carry cash around.” She also said she is continually impressed by the tenacity of people and their creativity when it comes to providing ID for the card. Photo IDs plus two proofs of New Haven residency are required.

“So what do you do if you’re Mexican and were robbed, and you lost your passport, your consular iID, your school records, and your birth certificate? We work with people, often guiding them to the consular offices or embassies in New York, in order to get what they need to qualify for the card. We have many people, people in the hundreds, who have come back three and four times until the proper ID has been obtained. That impresses. I am really proud to be associated with the work we’re doing here.”

This Aug. 10, Winn said, San Francisco will debut its version of the residency card, modeled on New Haven’s.