Bill Seeks to Expand Rights for New York’s Immigrants

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: March 23, 2011

Three months after the defeat of the Dream Act, a Congressional bill that would have provided a path to legal residency for young illegal immigrants, a state senator from New York City has introduced his own version of the legislation in Albany.

Unlike its federal counterpart, the bill would not offer those immigrants a path to legal residency. But it would give some of them certain rights now granted only to legal residents and citizens, including the ability to hold some state jobs — a provision that appears to challenge federal laws that prohibit the hiring of undocumented workers.

The bill would allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses, a proposal that will undoubtedly reprise the fiery debates that compelled Gov. Eliot Spitzer to drop a similar plan in 2007.

State Senator Bill Perkins, a Manhattan Democrat who introduced the bill this week, acknowledged the challenges confronting it. “There’s politics and other types of obstacles that must be overcome,â€