Certain undocumented immigrants will be eligible for driver's licenses and ID cards, according to a press release issued today by the N.C. Department of Transportation. The department will also reinstate driving privileges to 13 immigrants whose licenses were suspending pending the N.C. Attorney General's opinion and the N.C. DOT review.

The decision affects immigrants who have been accepted into the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants work permits to some immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

In June 2012, Homeland Security established DACA, a program allowing undocumented immigrants who as children had been brought to the U.S. by their parents, to legally stay in the U.S. for two years without being deported.

On Jan. 17, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper issued an opinion authorizing the Division of Motor Vehicles to grant the licenses but the N.C. DOT delayed its decision to do so for nearly a month.

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, a Republican, disagreed with Cooper's opinion, telling The News & Observer that the attorney general's office "was wrong."

Immigrants and their advocates protested the delay, and asked newly appointed DOT Secretary Tony Tata to proceed with issuing the licenses.

In defeat, protest, or a bit of both, a group of advocates walked out of a Durham City Council work session Thursday after the Council dismissed their concerns about the restrictive new panhandling ordinance.

Just minutes earlier, the Rev. Carolyn Schuldt had arrived at City Hall enthused to represent Durham’s homeless, joined by 10 others from the faith community. She hoped to convince council members to repeal the ordinance, which prohibits panhandlers from posting at the city’s most profitable spots.

The law, Schuldt told council members, “directly impacts the survival of a very vulnerable population by making them more dependent on government support as it is no longer possible for them to support themselves.”

Before Schuldt could reach the crux of her argument, the Council cut her off. Flustered, she distributed copies of a petition for repeal (signed by 437 local people) to council members, and then took her seat in the audience.

In his response, Councilman Eugene Brown expressed offense, saying that he resented the group’s “insinuation” that the city doesn’t care about the homeless. He addressed the advocates regarding their silent protest at the City Council meeting earlier this week.

“The implication by holding up the signs is that Durham is a city that has turned its back on the homeless population,” Brown said. “And that is simply not true. We are working to do what we can to meet this challenge.”

At that City Council meeting, Mayor Bell cited several programs and initiatives that are working to help Durham’s poor, as several homeless people sat in the audience.

Are the homeless failing to take advantage of these services, or are they not meeting the criteria? Schuldt’s point is that many homeless suffer from physical and mental illness, alcoholism and drug addiction, so are considered too “at-risk” to be eligible for such programs.

Panhandling is their last resort. “It is very humiliating, frustrating, demeaning work, done out of necessity by those with no available alternative,” Schuldt said.

For now, the ordinance appears to be in place. Councilman Brown reiterated that the ordinance was prompted by safety concerns, as well as citizens’ complaints. He said the Council’s position is actually a compromise, and less restrictive compared to rules in Chapel Hill, where begging is disallowed on public streets entirely.

As the Mayor concurred with Brown’s response, the advocates filed out of the room. They gathered in the hallway, murmuring with disappointment. “I was supposed to have five minutes,” said Schuldt, momentarily downcast.

She plans to attend next week’s work session to respond to Brown. “This is not the end. God is in our midst.”

Her nonprofit, Open Table Ministry, will hold a Winter Walk on behalf of Durham’s homeless population on Feb. 16 at 1 p.m. The four-mile walk on the American Tobacco Trail will begin at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

Pastor Rich Goodier of Mt. Hermon Baptist Church in Durham was among those in favor of repeal at the work session. “I hope that they will reconsider,” said Goodier. “They need to think about how to fight poverty, not fight the poor.”

On his way to Caffé Luna in Raleigh Monday night, House Majority Leader Thom Tillis and freshman members of the General Assembly seemed unfazed as they crossed paths with demonstrators who had assembled outside the eatery.

As Tillis and friends hobnobbed inside, on nearby street corners, about 15 protestors organized by Tony Ndege and the North Carolina Coalition Against Corporate Power took Tillis to task on such issues as fracking, tax reform, voter ID legislation, immigration and education and their most major pet peeve, corporate power.

In particular, protestors condemned Tillis’ cozy relationship with ALEC, also known as the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate funded ‘research group’ that writes model bills. Those bills, which heavily favoring corporate interests, are then handed off to legislators with whom they are in cahoots.

In North Carolina, some of the corporations who benefit or have benefitted in the past from ALEC include Duke Energy, Bank of America, R.J. Reynolds and GlaxoSmithKline; laws get written that favor their business activity through deregulation and relaxed accountability standards.

And according to SourceWatch.org, a good deal of North Carolina’s Legislature has ALEC ties. Take Rep. and ex-House speaker Harold Brubaker—he sits on ALEC’s Board of Directors and its International Relations task force, and has supposedly been involved with the organization since 1986. And then there’s Rep. Tim Moffitt, who’s behind the proposed state takeover of Asheville’s water infrastructure. Moffitt’s on the ALEC International Relations Task Force too.

Brubaker and Moffitt are just two of an estimated 30 legislators in North Carolina who at the very least have attended an ALEC meeting. The speaker himself is also on the International Relations Task Force, which corporations can buy into for $10,000 a year.

Give his people credit for trying—a mouthpiece for Tillis came out of the Luna Café and engaged with protestors for a few minutes. But there’s not much he could have said to that crowd in defense of the speaker, who said he felt “honored” when he was named 2011 ALEC Legislator of the Year.

Ron Rabatsky, a protestor from Charlotte, described ALEC’s advocacy for corporate interests via legislation as “devious… insidious.”

“It’s an exchange,’ he said. ‘Legislators pay to sit with corporations, who pay to sit with legislators, to write legislation together. The problem is, not enough people know about it.”

The state House and Senate reconvene on Wednesday, Jan. 30.