At a Valley Vote meeting on December 20, 2004, where Mayor James Hahn was the keynote speaker, Hal Netkin ask him this question:
"In June of 2003, the Department of Justice and the FBI concluded that the Matricula Consular ID is not a reliable form of identification which endangers national security due to the non-existence of any means of verifying the true identity of the card holder.
My question to you is: What information did you have to justify the dismissal of the FBI's warning before you recently signed the ordinance to clear the way for our city's recognition of these foreign identification cards?"
To which the Mayor answered:
"The matricula IDs are better than nothing."
I then whipped out a matricula card purchased in the MacArthur park area the day before with a picture of Valley Vote's president Joe Vitti and handed it over to Joe.
The mayor then said: you could have gotten a social security card or driver's license as well.
I responded that social security cards and driver's licenses are verifiable -- matricula IDs are not.
Note that in the exchange, Mayor Hahn never answered the original question with the implication that he knew better than the Justice Department or the FBI.
