Lawmaker hasn't given up attempt to allow licenses for illegals

By: STEVE LAWRENCE - Associated Press | Friday, August 18, 2006 9:23 PM PDT ∞

SACRAMENTO -- Sen. Gil Cedillo said Friday that he has not given up on his eighth attempt to enact legislation that would let illegal immigrants get driver's licenses, even though his latest bill is bottled up in committee with time running out on lawmakers' 2006 session.

"There are a myriad of ways to do this," the Los Angeles Democrat said in an interview. "We're going to find one of them to do it."

Cedillo has been trying for eight years to overturn 1993 legislation that prohibits the state from issuing licenses to drivers who cannot prove they're in the country legally. Gov. Gray Davis signed one of his bill in 2003, but it was repealed by lawmakers after Davis was recalled by voters.

Opponents contend the Cedillo legislation would raise security concerns and reward illegal immigrants. But Cedillo says many of the estimated 2.5 million illegal immigrants in California already drive.

It would make highways safer if they passed driving tests and showed proof that they had auto insurance to get licenses, he says.

His latest legislation is stuck in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which held its last scheduled meeting of the year on Thursday without acting on the measure.

The committee's chairwoman, Assemblywoman Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, said she shelved the bill because it wouldn't get dispassionate consideration in an election year.

"It has come to a point where rational, productive debate on the issue on the floor is now highly unlikely," she said in a statement.

Some Democrats had expressed reluctance to vote on the bill, saying it would provide campaign fodder for Republicans and lead to another veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turned down two earlier versions of the measure.

But Cedillo said Democrats shouldn't "gauge our values based on the tenor of the debate."

"Our convictions transcend that," he added. "We have an obligation to develop good public policy. We have a duty to vote on that policy, and we have a duty to move that policy to the governor's desk."

He said he had commitments from Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, to try to find a way to get the bill -- or another measure with similar provisions -- to Schwarzenegger's desk before lawmakers adjourn their 2006 on Aug. 31.

Nunez said he had agreed to work with Cedillo to try to fashion a bill that could pass this year, but he said he opposes provisions of the current Cedillo legislation that would implement the federal Real ID Act, which he said would be costly for the state.

He also said he didn't want the Cedillo bill to give ammunition to opponents of "comprehensive immigration reform."

"I don't want to see the extreme right fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hysteria to defeat this measure and defeat the overall goal of trying to grant legalization to undocumented persons," he said.

The Real ID Act, passed last year by Congress to beef up security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sets stringent identification requirements for driver's license applicants.

Applicants would have to submit birth records, photo identification, proof of their addresses and, if they have them, Social Security numbers. And the Department of Motor Vehicles would have to verify the applicants' information.

An Assembly analysis of the act and Cedillo's bill says there is currently no efficient say to verify many of the documents required by the act.

The act also would require the DMV to suspend programs that allow good drivers to renew their licenses by mail or on the Internet, forcing them to go to a DMV office to get a renewal, the analysis said.

If states don't adopt the act's provisions by May 12, 2008, their licenses won't be recognized as valid identification documents to board airplanes or enter federal buildings.

But the National Conference of State Legislatures is demanding that Congress either appropriate money to cover the states' costs of implementing the act or rescind it.

The act allows states to issue licenses to illegal immigrants but requires those licenses to be of a different design or color than standard licenses. They also could not be used as federally recognized identification documents.

On the Net:

Read the bill, SB1160, at www.senate.ca.gov

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