New York City IDNYC

IDNYC example card, image provided by the City of New York (n.d.)

New York city differs from the European examples largely due to the difference in where the threat to immigrants and refugees arose. While the United States accepts numerous newcomers from around the world, and even makes some allowances for those that have resided within its borders without going through proper immigration procedure - the DACA program initiated by the Obama administration as an example - changes in political power led to efforts to expel undocumented immigrants, and to become far more selective on which countries new immigrants could arrive from. This created problems as communities found that beloved and important members of those communities were part of those undocumented groups, while others formed important parts of the labour force, and some had never even known any other life. This situation forced a number of cities to become "sanctuary cities" and New York City was one of the more notable. To help with these difficulties, they instituted the IDNYC program which aimed to provide identification documents to everyone, from the poor to irregular migrants (Oliver, Dekker, Geuijen, & Broadhead et al., 2020). Though this program was not without its issues - incidents of federal officials using the documents to target undocumented immigrants are well known - it still proved invaluable to these same groups when used with civic agencies (Greenberg, 2018). These documents help those who normally cannot access any governmental services due to a lock of documentation, brought on not only by immigration status, but also by issues such as poverty. This touches keenly on several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals such as poverty, inequality, economic growth and innovation to name a few. Access to identification is a key barrier to economic, social and political justice, as well as gaining the means to become properly employed and feed back into the economic systems that we all rely on.

So how might Calgary adapt this system? While our needs are not the same as New York - we do not have overtly anti-migration political leaders, in fact there is more sparring about resource allocation than anything else - there are still some clear benefits and ways that such a system could be implemented here. One primary highlight is that the cost of a government-issued ID can be prohibitive for those with lower incomes, especially if they are working multiple jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. For these people, the time it takes to go to a registrar and apply for an ID is more costly than the bill for the ID. At the same, the city already runs programs for low- income individuals in order for them to have reasonably priced access to public transit, which includes the ability to apply for a pass beyond the typical 9-5. This system could be rolled in with an ID system such that the bus pass becomes the ID, much as how the older UPass system works for post-secondary students. Should the city work with local partners, it could add extra functionality to the pass, and possibly expand availability. Picking up from the NYC example, the pass could also be a library card, as well as an access card for the city-owned leisure centres, folding many disparate functions into a single system while providing a basic governmental ID for places that require one, where a provincial ID would not be required. This could benefit not only migrant populations getting their start in Calgary by consolidating several civic functions, but it would also benefit the low income and youth populations as well.

-Jon A.-