SF to Issue ID Cards to Illegal Immigrants

San Francisco will issue its own identification cards, the city's Board of Supervisors decided yesterday. San Francisco is host to about 40,000 illegal immigrants, who will be able to use the cards to access city services and open bank accounts, though the details are not entirely worked out. City employees and police may not ask about immigration status.

San Francisco follows New Haven, Conn., which has issued nearly 5,000 cards since July; several other Bay Area cities share San Francisco’s don’t-ask policy on illegal immigration. The city cards don’t go nearly as far as New York’s proposed—now dropped—scheme to offer drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants. Critics compared the SF cards to high school IDs. (More illegal immigrant stories.)