Bill seeks to deny driver's licenses to illegals

The House is expected to pass a bill today that would effectively block states from providing driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants -- making moot California's simmering debate over the issue.

The legislation proposed by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., would require states to verify that all applicants for driver's licenses are American citizens or are living in the country legally. If states don't comply within three years, their licenses couldn't be used for federal purposes, including boarding airplanes.

The proposal by Sensenbrenner, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, was stricken from the national intelligence overhaul bill that Congress passed last autumn because it was considered too controversial. If it passes as expected in the Republican-dominated House, however, the bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

But Senate proponents are talking about attaching the bill to the Senate's first "must-pass'' legislation, perhaps the proposed $80 billion spending bill for the war in Iraq.

The proposal is part of a larger bill the House started debating Wednesday that includes other equally controversial sections, such as an effort to force asylum seekers to provide more corroborating evidence to support their claims of being persecuted in their home countries.

The Sensenbrenner bill also moves to complete the final 3-mile stretch of a 14-mile three-tier fence along the Mexican border around San Diego by giving the homeland security secretary the power to waive any laws, including environmental provisions and public bidding laws, that hold up the construction of it or similar border barriers.

The driver's license provision goes to the heart of an issue that figured in the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis, who had flip-flopped on legislation giving undocumented residents in California the right to get driver's licenses. Davis first opposed the measure, then signed it shortly before the recall election.

After taking office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persuaded the Legislature to repeal the law and vetoed another licensing bill last September after failing to reach a compromise with legislators.

While California doesn't allow the undocumented to gain licenses, 10 states do, so if the bill becomes law it will have a direct impact on them.

Sensenbrenner, his House supporters and the White House, which announced President Bush's support Wednesday, say their bill is a homeland security measure -- not an immigration bill -- and seeks to fulfill recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 investigating commission.

They promise to pursue immigration law changes, which could include Bush's proposal for a guest-worker program, later this year.

Opponents -- who include a broad coalition of groups supporting immigrant rights, civil rights and states' rights and environmentalists -- say the bill would drive the country's 8 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants further underground, deprive legitimate asylum seekers of protection and gut environmental laws and endanger illegal immigrants' lives by allowing border fence construction.

"This legislation will make Americans safer and more secure,'' Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Newport Beach (Orange County), who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, told reporters. "This is unfinished business from the 9/11 commission recommendations. ... I hope never again will we fail to see that border security is an integral part of homeland security,'' he added.

Proponents of the bill said the 19 plane hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, had 63 driver's licenses and other forms of government identification among them. Opponents said the 19 had entered the country legally, which made it easy for them to get such documents.

But Sensenbrenner pointed to the case of hijacker Mohamed Atta, who entered the country on a six-month visa but was given a six-year license by Florida. His bill would ban issuing licenses to immigrants past the expiration of their visas.

Proponents said they weren't telling states how to issue driver's licenses. But if states don't require applicants to submit birth certificates or immigration documents showing their legal status and verify those documents, their licenses can't be used for any federal purpose. That means all states will feel obliged to comply, if the measure becomes law.

The National Governors Association and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, who are already trying to comply with a federal law passed last year that set security standards for licenses, also oppose the bill. They said the new proposal amounts to an unfunded federal mandate and transforms state workers into immigration police.

"The bill seeks to move responsibility for enforcement of immigration laws to the states, and immigration is a federal responsibility,'' said Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Texas.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, criticized the provisions as creating "a de facto national ID card," which civil libertarians have long opposed. "We need a national conversation if we want that kind of Big Brother.''

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine (San Diego County) has been the border fence's main proponent for a decade. He said environmental concerns that have blocked the fence, mainly out of concerns that construction would seriously harm a 2,500-acre wildlife refuge and Indian archaeological sites, should be put aside in the post-Sept. 11 environment.

"This is a national security problem. The answer is to finish the border fence,'' said Hunter, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee.

Civil liberties groups said the House bill's asylum provisions would make it much more difficult for deserving asylum seekers to win their cases by placing the burden of proof on them.

"Attacking vulnerable men, women and children who have already suffered attacks does not make us more secure,'' said Dori Dinsmore of World Relief, a project of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Sensenbrenner said the asylum changes were designed in part to undo a series of rulings by the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that he says have made it hard for federal officials to deny practically any asylum application.

"The Ninth Circuit decisions make it almost impossible for immigration judges to consider applicants' credibility. It practically requires them to give asylum,'' he said.