Kateni Songeni twice went to City Hall on Friday to get her driver’s license renewed, but both times she left because the line was too long.

The former Chuuk resident, who moved to Oahu nearly 20 years ago, has to renew her license even though she was issued one just a year ago. It expires at the end of the month.

When she gets her new license, it likewise will be good for another 12 months.

Because of their unique immigration status, thousands of Hawaii residents from the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau no longer are eligible to get regular state driver’s licenses, which are good for eight years in most cases.

Unless they have a federal Employment Authorization Document, which is issued for up to five years, drivers from those three Compact of Free Association nations are limited to one-year licenses under terms of the Real ID Act, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which enforces the law.

And the renewals must be done in person.

If Songeni had an EAD card, which she doesn’t, she could get a license that would match the expiration date of the card. COFA nationals can apply for the cards at no charge from DHS.

While the licensing restriction has been in place since mid-2015, many of the COFA nationals are only now learning about the reduced duration as their old licenses expire.

Songeni, 58, an airline food preparation worker, said she didn’t know about the change until after she saw that her renewed license last year was good for only 12 months.

“It’s better to have one longer,” she said in an interview. “It’s more convenient to me and to my work.”

Advocates question why Micronesians, who under the compact are able to travel to the U.S. without visas and can live and work here indefinitely, are being treated differently from immigrants who obtain green cards and also can reside and work in the U.S.

Green-card holders can get regular licenses.

“It becomes a fairness issue,” said Dina Shek, legal director for the Medical-Legal Partnership Hawaii, which provides free legal services to Micronesians and others.

Shek and other advocates are working with the Micronesian community in Hawaii in hopes of getting the one-year restriction changed. They cite the disparate treatment and the inconvenience factor, with people often having to leave work for hours to renew their licenses.

“You could lose your job if you keep doing this,” said Josie Howard, program director of We Are Oceania, an advocacy group designed to empower Hawaii’s Micronesian community. “It creates obstacles.”

About 15,000 Micronesians call Hawaii home, but there are no data readily available on how many have driver’s licenses.

Each county takes on the responsibility of issuing licenses on behalf of the state.

When the new policy took effect two years ago, county representatives met with state officials over several months to sort through the process, trying to get everyone on the same page.

“It’s so confusing,” said Naomi O’Dell, administrator for Hawaii County’s vehicle registration and licensing division.

Underscoring that point, the counties don’t handle the process uniformly.

Hawaii and Kauai counties say they use the expiration date of the COFA applicant’s passport to set the duration of the driver’s license.

Honolulu and Maui say they use EAD cards unless the applicant does not have one. In those instances the license is issued for only a year, as in Songeni’s case.

The one-year restriction is linked to a lack of an “end of stay” date for Micronesians in their travel documents, given their ability to remain in the U.S. indefinitely under terms of the compact.

Under the Real ID Act, which tightened federal requirements on driver’s licenses, residents of the three COFA nations are treated as nonimmigrants, according to DHS.

“Individuals from the compact states have an indefinite length of stay so technically they can only be issued a one year license,” DHS spokeswoman Jenny Burke wrote in an email to the Star-Advertiser. “However, we have made a specific allowance for them.”

She was referring to the ability to use an EAD card to extend the duration of the license for up to five years.

Tamera Heine, a community outreach worker for the consulate general of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in Honolulu, said her office is encouraging people to get EAD cards because of the licensing benefit.

Heine, who moved here from the Marshall Islands, said she obtained her card before renewing her license earlier this year. Her new license expires in 2022.

Howard said many COFA applicants are unaware of the new requirements and often are not told at the county offices how they can get an extended license. “There’s no explanation,” she said.

That’s why Howard’s group and others say they are trying to educate Micronesians about the new requirements.

One option available to them is to get a special-purpose license, good for eight years. But that license can be used only for driving and cannot serve as an official ID, according to O’Dell, the Big Island administrator.

Now that Songeni knows about the EAD benefit, she said she intends to obtain a card before she has to renew her license next year.