POSTED: 3:26 PM PDT June 2,
2004
SACRAMENTO --
Drivers' license applicants from among California's estimated 2 million
illegal immigrant adults would have to undergo fingerprinting, background checks
and other security measures to ease concerns of opponents including Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger, under a new legislative proposal Wednesday.
The latest proposal by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles
-- the fourth in two years -- is once again triggering a clash with popular
opinion in California. Schwarzenegger capitalized on public opposition last
fall, campaigning against licensing illegal immigrant drivers and quickly
persuading lawmakers to repeal a new law allowing the practice.
The latest attempt would have to pass the Legislature
before Aug. 31 and be signed by Schwarzenegger by Sept. 30 to become law. It
would require illegal immigrants to pay $146 for licenses, thereby financing the
costs of state and federal background checks and a new system of citizenship
classes that recipients would have to attend before having their licenses
renewed.
Immigrants would be able to get their drivers'
licenses by showing a federal taxpayer identification card or identification
cards from their consulates. The bill does not apply to commercial licenses.
But a Schwarzenegger spokesman said Wednesday the
newest proposal still falls short, and suggested the senator "may have to show a
little more patience politically." Schwarzenegger promised late last year to
work with Cedillo on a new approach, saying he approved of providing licenses to
immigrants "the right way."
The newest legislation comes just months after legal
licenses for illegal immigrant drivers became a leading issue in the recall
campaign against former Gov. Gray Davis.
Davis refused to sign the bill in 2001 and 2002 over
security and terrorism concerns, but then signed a drivers license bill in 2003,
triggering political accusations that he was pandering to the state's Hispanic
voters.
Nationally, 40 states and the District of Columbia
require drivers to prove their legal residency before getting licenses,
according to the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center. Most of
California's neighbors, including Oregon, Washington, Utah and Hawaii, don't
have the requirement.
California began demanding proof of legal residency
for drivers' licenses in 1994.
Cedillo, flanked by Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, Assembly
Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh, another
Los Angeles Democrat who heads the Legislature's 24-member Latino Caucus, called
his new bill a six-month product of focus groups, town hall meetings and polling
that "would resolve the issue once and for all."
Backers say drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants
will make the state's highways and streets safer as applicants take drivers'
tests and become insured. Bratton said Los Angeles has a "very significant
problem with hit and run" accidents where unlicensed drivers flee the scene.
But opponents call licenses a reward for people living
illegally in California and maintain terrorists could use a license law to blend
into the state.
Bratton called the
terrorist arguments unwarranted.
"The idea that we seem to be pushing this thing back
because of concerns about terrorism more than anything else, I just don't see
it," he said. Under the bill, residents of nations considered by the U.S.
Department of State to be state sponsors of international terrorism - including
Cuba, Libya and North Korea -- would not be eligible for drivers' licenses.
Bratton also differed with the
Schwarzenegger administration over requiring that licenses indicate the holder
is not a legal resident of California.
"I think that's very
inappropriate," he said. "It harkens back to the era when Jews were required to
wear yellow armbands. It harkens back to Puritan times in my home state when we
branded people with scarlet letters."
Stutzman called the chief's comparisons "absurd and
hyperbole. We're talking about granting licenses to undocumented aliens," he
said.
From
KTVU.com