Don't allow illegal immigrants to get licenses

First published: Sunday, October 7, 2007
HAROLD B. SHUGAR
Albany

http://www.timesunion.com
Gov. Eliot Spitzer, in a covert operation released for publication on a Friday afternoon, where it would get the least amount of publicity, has ordered change so that illegal immigrants with valid foreign passports can obtain driver's licenses. His decision is arbitrary and has no relationship to the real world. Attorneys make poor leaders, as they live in the unreal world of the courts.
A driver's license, together with your birth certificate next to a U.S. passport, is the most valuable identification American citizen's possess.


Just how qualified are county clerks to authenticate the validity of a passport? How can a county clerk know whether a foreign passport is valid or forged? They are not qualified. Can one imagine the crush of illegal immigrants crowding into the county clerk's office for their driver's license? It makes no sense.

Having recently obtained a passport for myself, the time it took the clerk to process my passport was a good 20 minutes even with all the required documents including my birth certificate.

In real life, there are passport factories that will manufacture a faux passport on demand that purports to be valid. Immigrants have been known to carry half a dozen passports from various countries.

What Spitzer proposed, in the dead of the night, with an unnamed select group, is an impeachable offense. This madness needs to be reversed. I will be glad to sign a document for his recall. Power corrupts and total power corrupts totally. Governor Spitzer should be held accountable.