Giuliani calls for law to ban driver’s licenses for illegals
The controversy over driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants will move to Congress now that Republican presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani has persuaded lawmakers to try to ban states from taking such action.
Giuliani announced Wednesday that he had asked Reps. Peter King, R-Long Island, and Pete Sessions, RTexas, to introduce legislation that would prohibit states from issuing licenses of any kind to undocumented aliens.
Sessions later said that he would introduce such a bill.
Capitalizing on a controversy stemming from New York Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer’s proposal to allow illegal immigrants to obtain licenses, Giuliani said states can do so only because of a loophole in federal law.
“I think this is a serious error, and Congress should consider closing this loophole,” Giuliani said at a news conference in the National Press Club.
Under federal law, states can allow illegal immigrants to obtain a certain kind of driver’s license. Spitzer is proposing such an arrangement as part of a deal with the U.S. Homeland Security Department that would involve establishing other kinds of licenses to ease cross-border transit for state residents who are U.S. citizens and provide federally accepted identification for citizens and those in the country legally.
But Giuliani said allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses would be a bad idea.
“It would really seriously obstruct the ability of the federal government to carry out its primary responsibility, which is to enforce our borders,” he said.
Giuliani’s comments were aimed not so much at Spitzer, but at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the Democratic front-runner for president.
Clinton stumbled over a question on the driver’s license issue at a debate last week and tried to clarify her stance in a statement and CNN interview.
Asked whether issuing licenses to illegal immigrants was a good idea, she replied: “It depends upon what state they’re in. It depends upon what they think the risks are. A governor of New York that has a lot of immigrants, many of whom we know are not there legally, has to worry about security. A governor of another state where that’s not a problem doesn’t.”
Giuliani, who mocked Clinton for apparently waffling on the issue last week, took her to task for her latest comments.
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