New York officially launched its first municipal identification program Monday.
“This card is available to everyone,” Mayor de Blasio said at a press conference at the Queens Library in Flushing. “It's going to mean people can lead fuller lives, better lives, lives full of respect and recognition.”
The muni ID card will be accepted by all city agencies and by 10 small banks and credit unions. The card will be free through the end of 2015, and New Yorkers can apply at one of the 11 enrollment centers.
Esther Sanchez Morales, 42, who came from Mexico 18 years ago and was among the first New Yorkers to get the card, said it offers an important change. She said she’s had problems entering hospitals when she took her kids.
“Since the time that I applied for the ID, I feel that I exist,” she said “that I am a citizen of New York City.”
The card has been designed to primarily benefit groups who don't have state-issued forms of ID, such as immigrants who don't have legal status, the homeless and young people in foster care. Transgender people will also be able to designate their preferred gender on the card.
To entice many other New Yorkers to apply the city has also secured prescription drug discounts, memberships at major cultural institutions and the use of the card in public libraries.
In localities where muni ID card programs are already in place, success has been limited, with only about 1 percent of the population applying, according to the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Nisha Agarwal.
"We definitely want to do better," she said.
City officials said they were projecting 1000 applications would be processed by the end of Monday.
Outside the Queens Library in Flushing, in the rain, dozens of people lined up to apply. Sunil Rami, 42, from India, said she wants to have a document that will be accepted.
“We have passport,” she said. “We cannot use [it] anywhere.”
Others, like Segundo Guallpa, 46, who's from Ecuador, had specific plans on how to use the new card.
“To open a bank account” he said. “To walk the streets without fear.”