Drivers licenses
California Insider
A Weblog by
Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub
According to this New York Times story (registration required), the issue of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants is among the stumbling blocks holding up passage of the intelligence reform bill in Congress. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, a key Republican negotiator, wants to ban licenses for illegals, while President Bush does not want such a provision in the bill.
An excerpt:
Mr. Bush intervened to try to rescue the talks about 7 p.m. Friday, when he telephoned Mr. Sensenbrenner from aboard Air Force One, en route to Chile, with a plea that Mr. Sensenbrenner compromise and drop his insistence that the bill contain a provision banning the issuance of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Mr. Sensenbrenner had long championed the idea, which he depicted as a means of blocking terrorists from obtaining official government identification; several of the Sept. 11 hijackers had been issued driver's licenses. But it was opposed by White House officials and many lawmakers from both parties as unnecessary and an infringement on the rights of state governments.
"What the president was stressing to me was that he would like to get this issue off the table because the Congressional agenda and the presidential agenda were going to be very ambitious" next year, Mr. Sensenbrenner said of Mr. Bush's request for quick passage of an intelligence bill. "I didn't want to give up on the driver's license provision," he said. "But out of respect for him, if he asked me to, I said I would give up on it."
Either way, the bill has the potential to get Gov. Schwarzenegger off the hook. Obviously, if the feds ban them, his hands are tied and he can quit negotiating with California Democrats who are pushing him to approve the licenses. If Sensenbrenner drops his move and the bill instead contains guidelines for the states to use, then the governor can apply those and tell conservatives he is simply following federal law. |
