Demands by Davis Threaten Bill to License Immigrant Drivers

SACRAMENTO —  A proposed compromise aimed at inducing Gov. Gray Davis to sign legislation allowing illegal immigrants to obtain California drivers’ licenses faced a new and potentially fatal firestorm of opposition Tuesday.

Legislators who voted for the bill last year, including Senate leader John L. Burton (D-San Francisco), criticized a second bill intended to settle the controversy as an unfair remedy that would make California immigrants the scapegoats for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

Although some of the terrorists obtained phony driver’s licenses, several lawmakers said they saw no connection between licensing illegal immigrants to drive and acts of domestic terrorism.

At one point in a committee hearing, Burton suggested that the Democratic governor got interested in the immigrant driver’s license bill earlier this month only when an equally controversial bill sought by the United Farm Workers of America was passed by the Legislature. Davis aides have indicated he may veto that bill.

The Senate Public Safety Committee heard witnesses from both sides of the driver’s license issue but delayed a vote on the proposal (AB 1206) by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) until today. However, members of the committee said that, without extensive amendments, the proposed compromise was unacceptable.

At issue is the long-running fight over whether more than 800,000 illegal immigrants should be licensed to drive in California. Police chiefs and insurance companies favor licensing them in the interest of enhanced highway safety.

But immigration reform advocates assert that the state has no business allowing someone who got into this country by breaking the law to be eligible for a privilege reserved for law-abiding residents.

On its third try, the Legislature last year approved licensing qualified illegal immigrants to drive, provided they were in the process of becoming legal residents and were paying federal taxes. But when the bill reached Davis, he balked at signing it, voicing concern that such a law would relax security safeguards at a time that the country was trying to improve security.

However, Davis indicated last week that he would sign the bill if the Legislature quickly drafted and passed legislation to provide additional safeguards.

These would include subjecting license applicants to criminal background checks of state and federal sources, requiring applicants to have worked at least 15 months during the previous three years and creating an information exchange between the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The freshly written compromise bill, which contained many but not all of the governor’s demands, was criticized by opposition witnesses and committee members, including Burton, the most powerful Democrat in the Legislature.

Among other things, they challenged the constitutionality of several provisions, noting that no other driver’s license applicant is subject to a criminal background investigation or is required to produce evidence of employment.

Burton told Cedillo, author of last year’s bill as well as of the proposed compromise, that the governor’s demands for more safeguards “make it improbable that many people will get a driver’s license,” even if Cedillo’s bill becomes law.

Burton said Davis should sign the original bill, AB 60, without insisting on potentially unlawful safeguards. “If it was signed, the world wouldn’t come to an end; people wouldn’t be driving around blowing up buildings and airports and capitols,” he said.