The Registry of Motor Vehicles is on a hiring spree to prepare for a new law that allows people without lawful proof of presence in the United States to apply for a Massachusetts driver’s license.
The agency is hiring more than 200 employees in anticipation of the law, which is scheduled to take effect on July 1. Most of the new hires are frontline service center workers who will work face-to-face with applicants and be responsible for validating the necessary foreign documents to get a license, the top RMV official said.
Registrar of Motor Vehicles Colleen Ogilvie said the RMV is in the process of hiring 139 service center workers and 77 road test examiners. Other RMV departments added anywhere from two to eight people depending on the role over the past year, she said.
“We anticipate a large demand for this driver’s license with these new customers eligible. So that will put demand on our service centers,” Ogilvie told the Herald. “… We expect appointment demand for permits to increase and so the added staff will help us meet that demand.”
An RMV spokesperson did not immediately know how much the new hires added to the RMV’s payroll. But the Healey administration previously said the state would spend $28 million to implement the law.
State officials have quickly worked in the background during the last year after the Legislature approved the driver’s license law over former Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto. The measure was hailed by supporters as a way to increase road safety but criticized by some for offering incentives to people not legally in the United States.
Gov. Maura Healey said the driver’s license law provides a “benefit for public safety, our economy, and for our immigrant residents who should be able to drive to work, school, or the grocery store without fear.”
“We are excited to begin implementing this new law, and the RMV has been working diligently to ensure a smooth process for all eligible applicants,” she said in a statement.
Republicans in Massachusetts, mounted a failed bid to overturn the measure through a fall 2022 ballot question. But after voters shot the question down at the ballot box in November, RMV officials were left to parse out how to offer driver’s licenses to non-residents.
Ogilvie said by mid-April, the RMV had hired 65 people to work the frontline at service centers and over the last several months, “we added a variety of resources to the road test team.”
“Surprisingly, we have a large number of applicants for our roles in each of the postings that we do,” Ogilvie said. “We’re probably not having as hard a time as some other industries are having and I think it is probably related to state benefits and the opportunity to build a retirement benefit.”
The RMV expects 280,000 people to apply for a license during the first four years of the law, with the biggest demand between July and December, when the agency expects 105,000 to apply.
Applicants can head to nearly all of the RMV service centers in the state to apply for a license, which are expanding their hours on weekdays starting July 8. The RMV also plans to open seven sites on Saturdays to focus on license related-transactions and has created a website with additional information.
Ogilvie said she hopes it will take at most 15 weeks from the time an application is submitted to when a person has a license in hand.
A person applying for a driver’s license under the law needs to provide documents proving who they are and when they were born. One of those documents can be a valid unexpired foreign passport or a valid unexpired consular identification document.
Applicants can pick from a list of five other documents to show to RMV officials.
That includes a valid unexpired driver’s license from any U.S. state or territory; an original or certified copy of a birth certificate; a valid unexpired foreign national identification card; a valid unexpired foreign driver’s license; or a marriage certificate or divorce decree issued by any U.S. state or territory.
At least one of the documents needs to have a photograph of the applicant and date of birth. If the documents are not in English, the applicant is required to provide a “certified translation,” according to the text of the law.
Ogilvie said the RMV started reaching out to local consulates last fall to get sample documents, including consular identification cards.
“Part of our effort is to educate our employees about what these documents, what the valid documents look like, and build our library so we can build that into our training of our employees,” Ogilvie said.