Thread: Feds may pre-empt license push

http://www.insidebayarea.com/searchresults/ci_2704301



Feds may pre-empt license push
Congressional rules to deny driving rights to illegal immigrants could stymie state effort
By Michele R. Marcucci, STAFF WRITER


Congress appears set to approve new rules that would effectively bar states from granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, a move that has quashed hopes that California could one day grant licenses to its undocumented residents.
Advocates for both immigrants and immigration controls said the rules will kill state legislative efforts to offer licenses to illegal immigrants here. But a spokesman for state Sen. Gilbert Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, the author of bills to grant the licenses, disagreed.

"It doesn't end the debate, especially here in California," said Cedillo spokesman Edward Headington. "We need to find a way to deal with the close to 2 million people whoare currently on our roads and highways that are untested, untrained and uninsured."

Some version of the proposed rules, included in a House of Representatives-sponsored bill called Real ID and inserted into a spending bill for Iraq, are expected to be signed by President Bush within the week.

Under the rules being considered, before granting a driver's license, a state would have to require proof of citizenship or legal presence, of an address and of a Social Security number. It would need to check the legal status of noncitizens against a national immigration database, to save copies of any documents shown and to store a digital image of the face of each applicant.

An issued license must include the driver's address and a digital photograph, and would incorporate new authentication features designed to prevent counterfeits. The new law would require that the licenses of legal temporary residents expire when their visas do.

State laws

Under the current proposal, licenses from states that continue to offer them to illegal immigrants will not be accepted as valid identification in federal facilities, including airports, immigrant advocates said.

Nine states now grant driver's licenses to noncitizens who do not have visas. There is no reliable estimate of how many licenses have been issued to noncitizens, whether in the country legally or illegally.

Two other states offer driver's cards that are different from official state licenses.

Immigrant advocates have panned the proposed license ban, saying it makes Americans less safe. They said licenses will give the government information about a largely unknown group of people living in the United States. Without licenses, potentially millions of drivers would remain on the nation's roadways without any insurance or proof that they meet minimum proficiency standards.

Safety concerns

Civil rights organizations and privacy advocates say they are concerned that a standardized driver's license would amount to a national identification card and


that a central database would be vulnerable to identify theft.
Advocates are also critical of provisions that could allow states to issue driver identification to illegal immigrants that is different than a regular driver's license. They say such provisions are a recipe for bureaucratic snafus that could entangle legal residents who lack the documentation to prove they are legal â€â€

They could've if they actually have the stats handy add to the argument against illegals drivin is the number of fatal accidents they cause here as well as the amount of them arrested for DUI.Quite a few of both.