11:41 AM 03/18/2019
Kerry Picket
A majority of New York State voters, according to a newly released Siena College poll, overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigrants receiving driver’s licenses.
Sixty-one percent of New York voters say they do not believe non-citizens should receive driver’s licenses. While 49 percent of Democrats support issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, 84 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Independents oppose such a policy.
“Overwhelmingly, Republicans and Independents, upstaters and downstate suburbanites, oppose allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses. Democrats and New York City voters are closely divided on the issue,” Siena Research’s Steven Greenberg said. “White voters strongly oppose; black and Latino voters support it by small margins.”
New York’s WGRZ TV conducted their own poll last year when New York State Democrat lawmakers pushed for licenses for illegal immigrants and their viewers overwhelmingly opposed it.
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NY Immigration Coalition: Credit: WGRZ TV Video Screen Shot
Siena’s numbers were released one month after immigrant advocate groups did another push for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants now that Democrats have the majority of both chambers in the New York State legislature.
In 2017, a bill that would have allowed licenses to illegal immigrants was filed in the lower chamber by Democratic Assemblyman Francisco Moya, but the legislation died in the state Senate, which was controlled by the Republicans at the time.
New York State Comptroller Scott Stringer is an advocate for the measure.
“For many of us, a driver’s license is nothing more than a piece of plastic tucked in between our credit cards, but for undocumented immigrants it means better job opportunities, a safe way to get your child to school, and to the hospital in an emergency – all without fear of deportation during a routine traffic stop,” Stringer said at a rally with Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) officials in Manhattan last month, according to The New York Post.
Stringer and FPI pointed to reports that showed the state would rack up extra money totaling $9.6 million through additional driver’s license fees.
The new Siena poll, however, shows a majority of New York State voters don’t like the leftward direction the New York State is going in, either. Just 36 percent say that the Empire State is not moving too far to the political left, while 51 percent says the state is moving too politically leftward.
“While Democrats disagree, a strong majority of independents and an overwhelming majority of Republicans say that Democratic control of the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature are moving the state too far to the left,” Greenberg said. “Two-thirds of voters — including a majority of Democrats — say that Democratic control of the state makes it harder for businesses to be successful.”
This Siena College Poll was conducted between March 10-14 by telephone calls conducted in English to 700 New York State registered voters. It has an overall margin of error of +4.2 percentage points.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/18/n...vers-licenses/
