Kansas noncitizens under scrutiny with new driver's license bill
Jan 22, 2025
TOPEKA (KSNT) - Kansas lawmakers are considering a bill this week which would use the Division of Vehicles (DOV) to inform officials about non-citizens who acquire state IDs.
Republican Representative Paul Waggoner introduced House Bill 2020 on Jan. 16. The bill, if enacted in its present state, would require the director of the DOV to submit a monthly report to the Kansas Secretary of State containing the personal information of non-citizens including the following:
Names
Addresses
Phone numbers
Social security numbers.
Dates of birth.
Temporary drivers' license numbers and their expiration dates.
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The Secretary of State would then be required to compare these reports with voter registration rolls, deleting any names of non-citizens which appear on the voter rolls. People who are impacted by this would be informed by the Secretary of State of the removal and be told that they can be put back on the voter rolls after providing proof of citizenship.
Lawmakers with the Committee on Elections held a hearing on the bill on Tuesday, Jan. 21 in the statehouse. Clay Barker, general counsel for the Secretary of State's office, appeared at the meeting to give an overview of the bill and what it would mean if it receives approval to become a new law.
"Essentially, what this bill does is it makes a statutory requirement of something that's been going on for about 15 years and we recently worked with Governor [Laura] Kelly on this where the Department of Motor Vehicles would give us a list of people who have a temporary driver's license and we would compare it to the voter rolls, trying to identify anyone that might be a non-citizen who's on the voter rolls," Barker said.
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The fiscal note for the bill shows the implementation of HB 2020 would cost about $1,250 out of the state general fund for the fiscal year 2026 due to programming and testing requirements. Lists collected by the Kansas Department of Revenue (KDOR) of non-citizen information would also be unavailable for release to the public without significant redaction efforts due to the confidential details it contains.
"The Secretary of State and a lot of other agencies in Kansas are a member of a federal program called SAVE where you can send individual information and it will tell you that person's immigration status," Barker said.
To watch the full hearing on HB 2020 from Jan. 21, click here. To learn more about the SAVE program managed by the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), click here.
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