MOORE — Kenneth Pricer just wanted to renew his driver’s license.

Pricer, 81, was shopping with is wife Tuesday, when a clerk pointed to his license said it had expired.

“No big deal,” Pricer thought. The last time he renewed his license, the trip took about 15 minutes; and because he was retired, it didn’t cost him a thing.

So Pricer and his wife, Marlane, finished their shopping and traveled to the Moore Tag Agency for, what they thought at the time, would be a quick errand.

Six hours — and four trips later — Kenneth Pricer got his license.

But the process required traveling from the tag agency to home, then to Norman, then to the bank, then to Oklahoma City and, finally, back to Moore.

“It was crazy,” Pricer said. “I had no idea.”

Pricer was one of hundreds of residents caught in a web of problems caused by the state’s new immigration law, House Bill 1804.

The law, authored by state Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, went into effect Nov. 1.

Terrill said the bill is supposed to curtail illegal immigration and prevent undocumented residents from obtaining state-issued identification.

To prevent undocumented workers from receiving state benefits, state and local agencies are required to verify the citizenship status of applicants before authorizing benefits and public employers are required to enter job applicants into an electronic immigration database to verify legal status.

Those rules also include drivers licenses.

And the changes apply to any resident — lifelong or not — who lets that license expire.

“We went to the tag agency, but they said, ‘because of the new law you have a problem,’” Pricer said. “They said ‘you have to go to the Department of Public Safety and take either your passport or birth certificate and get it okayed to get a drivers license.’ Then they said to ‘bring it back and they would issue the license for you.’”

For Pricer, the new law meant traveling a total of more that 100 miles and spending about five hours to get his license renewed.