Immigration: Governors speed ahead where Hillary Clinton stumbled
Immigration: Governors speed ahead where Hillary Clinton stumbled
http://images.politico.com/global/20...val_ap_605.jpgGovernors in both parties have signed legislation granting driving privileges. | AP Photos
By KEVIN ROBILLARD | 6/16/13 6:54 AM EDT Updated: 6/16/13 2:36 PM EDT
Several governors with potential 2016 ambitions are speeding ahead with plans to give driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, nearly six years after the issue tripped up Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes.
Maryland’s Martin O’Malley (D), Vermont’s Peter Shumlin (D), Colorado’s John Hickenlooper (D) and Nevada’s Brian Sandoval (R) have all signed legislation granting driving privileges to at least some illegal immigrants, part of a wave of seven states adopting similar laws so far this year. In an eighth state, Florida, lawmakers passed a bill by overwhelming margins only to see Republican Gov. Rick Scott veto it.
As of Jan. 1, only four states — Washington state, California, Utah and New Mexico — had such laws in place.
(PHOTOS: Arizona immigration law)
Supporters say licenses promote safety by getting the immigrants to comply with traffic safety laws, meet insurance requirements and pay the necessary fees.
“This is not about politics,” Sandoval said last month at a signing ceremony for Nevada’s bill. “This is about making roads safer.” He added, “This is good for everybody.”
Opponents charge that the laws turn driver’s licenses into a reward for being in the country illegally.
(PHOTOS: At a glance: The Senate immigration deal)
But the eagerness of prominent governors from both parties to embrace the legislation shows how much the politics of immigration has changed since October 2007, when Clinton’s fumbling of a debate question about a proposed driver’s license law became the first serious stumbling block in what had seemed her inevitable road to the White House.
Six years later, following two presidential elections in which Democrats won with overwhelming support from Hispanic voters, the political risks appear to have dimmed while governors and state legislators try to woo a Latino populace that will soon encompass one-third of the nation. A similar dynamic is at play in Congress, where the Senate has been consumed with an attempt at sweeping changes to federal immigration policy.
(PHOTOS: Pols react to immigration deal)
“You can’t take politics out of politics,” said Republican Utah state Sen. Curt Bramble, who wrote his state’s driver’s license law for undocumented immigrants and testified on behalf of the Nevada legislation. “On both sides of the aisle, elected officials want to be seen as doing something for the community.”
The moves also show that key states are once again a step ahead of Washington in being willing to tweak their approach to immigration. While states have little direct influence on immigration policy, laws on aspects like driver’s licenses give the governors a chance to weigh in.
“I think it’s [a] fair thing to say that as we move toward comprehensive immigration reform … that this is a first step,” Hickenlooper told the Denver Post earlier this month after signing his state’s measure. “You’re going to have a driver’s license that allows people to get to work, to make sure they have insurance.”
(Also on POLITICO: Dodd-Frank's immigration lessons)
Another factor driving the change is an increasing number of Hispanic legislators, particularly in Nevada and Colorado. Nevada Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis, the chamber’s first Hispanic leader, repeatedly introduced driver’s license legislation only to watch it languish. That changed as the electorate sent more Latinos to Reno.
“In the past, we were just killing the anti-immigrant stuff,” said Denis, a Democrat. “But now, we were able to something on the positive front.”
The political calculus was somewhat different in 2007, when outrage from conservative critics — stoked by talk radio and cable television — helped kill an immigration reform effort that had won support from both liberal Democrats and President George W. Bush.
At a Democratic presidential debate later that year, Clinton slipped up in what appeared to be an attempt to seem tough on illegal immigration while appealing to Hispanic voters.
“Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver’s license?” debate moderator Tim Russert asked Clinton, who had signaled support for a law backed by then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
“I did not say that it should be done,” Clinton said, “but I certainly recognize why Gov. Spitzer is trying to do it.”
The other Democratic candidates jumped on her answer. “I can’t tell whether she was for it or against it,” then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said.
The stumble was a first for the disciplined Clinton campaign, which at the time was leading the future president by 20 points or more in national polls. Two weeks later, she came out against driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, but the damage was done.
Obama, meanwhile, was accused of doing some waffling of his own in the next debate a couple of weeks later after CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked, “Do you support or oppose driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants?” Obama responded, “I am not proposing that that’s what we do,” drawing laughter from the crowd — although Blitzer was eventually able to pin him down as supporting the licenses.
At a later debate in January 2008, Obama said he would rather have comprehensive immigration reform but defended the driver’s licenses as a safety issue. “I don’t want a bunch of hit-and-run drivers because they’re worried about being deported and so they don’t report an accident,” he said.
The details of the current driver’s license push vary from state to state, but the legislation generally comes in one of three flavors: Washington and New Mexico give illegal immigrants full-on driver’s licenses, with all the normal privileges. Utah’s legislation, which has inspired copycats, gives the undocumented a “driver’s authorization card” that can be used on the roads and to purchase insurance but isn’t a valid form of identification otherwise.
Other states, including California and Florida, wrote legislation to give driving privileges exclusively to the young undocumented immigrants allowed to stay on U.S. soil under an executive action that Obama ordered last year. That order had no direct impact on the states’ decisions on driver’s licenses.
Regardless of the details, Utah’s Bramble said letting undocumented immigrants drive legally is important for public safety.
“The reality is that undocumented individuals, illegal aliens, are driving on our roads whether we like it or not,” he said.
Advocates of the license laws tick off the safety benefits: Having a driver’s license — and the insurance that’s often required — makes it far less likely that the undocumented person will flee the scene of an accident. Getting a license requires immigrants to pass an English-language driving test. And giving people some form of ID makes it easier for law enforcement officers to hand out a traffic ticket rather than dragging a minor offender back to a police station.
Including Shumlin, the Democratic Governors Association chairman who has occasionally been mentioned as a presidential contender; the openly ambitious O’Malley; Hickenlooper; and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who backed Spitzer’s proposal when he was the state’s attorney general, several of the nation’s top Democratic governors are united in their support for granting some form of driver’s license privileges for illegal immigrants.
But like their GOP counterparts in Congress, Republican state officials are split on the issue. In Maryland and Connecticut, small Republican minorities united in opposition to the legislation, arguing the laws would make the states magnets for illegal immigrants. On the other hand, Republican leaders in the Nevada Legislature joined Sandoval in backing a driver’s license measure, and Florida’s heavily GOP-dominated legislature backed it overwhelmingly.
In Virginia and Texas, home to Republican Govs. Bob McDonnell and Rick Perry, state motor vehicle departments decided to allow young undocumented immigrants to sign up for driver’s licenses after Obama’s decision last year. Neither governor intervened.
But in at least two states, high-profile Republican governors are fighting the movement. Scott vetoed Florida’s legislation, citing what he called the shaky legal ground on which the young illegal immigrants are allowed to stay in the United States.
“Although the Legislature may have been well-intentioned in seeking to expedite the process to obtain a temporary driver license, it should not have been done by relying on a federal government policy adopted without legal basis,” Scott wrote in a message explaining his veto.
And in New Mexico, Gov. Susana Martinez has repeatedly tried to repeal a more expansive driver’s license law. While laws in Utah and elsewhere only allow the license holder to drive, New Mexico’s licenses are no different from those given to U.S. citizens and can serve as IDs for buying guns or alcohol or boarding a flight.
This year, Martinez endorsed legislation that would have repealed the existing license law while allowing the young immigrants protected by Obama’s order to obtain licenses.
One thing is clear: The issue won’t go away until Congress fixes the nation’s immigration system. Until then, legislators will keep trying to “put a Band-Aid on a broken leg,” in Denis’s words.
Which is exactly why Clinton initially backed Spitzer’s legislation back in 2007.
“No state, no matter how well-intentioned, can fill this gap,” she said. “There needs to be federal action on immigration reform.”
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