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Traveling three hours across Kansas, Hispanos Unidos, a group within Sunflower Community Action (SCA), crowded into a state hearing demanding that lawmakers reverse a punitive driver's license law that discriminates against legal Hispanic citizens and undocumented immigrants.

Upon arrival, SCA sent state workers scrambling to accommodate 150 people from Garden City, Ark City, Kansas City and Wichita . The state hearing centered on the validity of the driver's license law passed last year, which states that if a person presents foreign identification when obtaining a driver's license, they must also prove their immigration status.

Based on the color of their skin or ethnic background Hispanic citizens and legal residents are often harassed at the local driver's license offices, causing embarrassment.

The law also states that a person must present a social security number to obtain a license, effectively cutting off the access of thousands of undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked in a community for years to obtain a driver's license. These community residents must then car insurance, becoming a danger to themselves and others on the road.

Sunflower's leaders are demanding for the state legislature to pass a recently introduced amendment to the driver's license law that would allow all Kansas citizens to use a tax identification number to obtain a driver's license. This law would ensure that all people could obtain a license and car insurance.

The joint House-Senate judiciary committee relocated their hearing from a small informal meeting room to the state Supreme Court room. All of the cast was present at the state hearing including: legislators, advocates, researchers, social service agency representatives, attorneys, city government officials, law enforcement, religious leaders, and Sunflower Community Action.

Three SCA leaders stepped to the podium to address legislators who were everywhere on the map with their opinions on whether the law is discriminatory.

Emira Palacios explained the difficulties of working through the legalization process. While she paid taxes for 10 of the 13 years she lived illegally in this country she also had to pay $10,000 in expenses to obtain her legal status. Her testimony clearly contradicted the earlier testimony made by a State of Kansas researcher that stated a green card only costs $6.

"Why is it we cannot drive legally on the roads we build?" she questioned legislators at the end of her testimony.

SCA leader, Dennis Romero, passionately drew parallels between Kansas' history of struggling to remain a free state under the pressure of neighboring states to become a slave state over a hundred years ago. He pointed out in the very building that they were debating the discriminatory driver's license law; the walls boasted a magnificent mural of John Brown, which reverberated the echoes of freedom's call from a century before.

"Why do I bring up the Driver's License law as an issue and compare it to slavery? Because this is a human rights issue and this law is racist," Romero stated.

The final testimony by Jonathan Becerril was the final triumph for Sunflower Community Action. Becerril, 19, has lived in the United States since the age of two.

When Becerril went to a local Driver's License Bureau to obtain his Driver's License with his immigration papers, the bureau official told him he would need to get a letter from an attorney stating that the papers were authentic before they would issue him a license. He obtained the letter after paying $475 - all for a $12 license.

The chairman of the joint committee proclaimed in an interview following the hearing that he will support changing the law to let undocumented workers get driver's licenses. The next important juncture for the law to be amended will be in the next legislative session that begins in January 2002. Hispanos Unidos and SCA anticipate a victory in 2002.