New York to grant driver's licneces to illegal immigrants

New York’s state governor Eliot Spitzer proposes granting illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, drawing criticism from immigration critics in the process. Terrorism and security experts, however, agree with Spitzer that bringing a hidden population into the open and ultimately making the system more secure, not to mention getting more drivers on the road licensed and insured, would be good for New York and for the United States. The New York Times’s Nicholas Confessore quotes these experts to say that the success of the policy will rest on the reliability of new technology that Spitzer wants installed in Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices to verify the authenticity of passports and other documents that the illegal immigrants will be required to submit when applying for licenses. Some of the new security problems predicted by critics appear unlikely, several security experts said. Having a driver’s license should not make it easier to board a domestic airplane flight, because foreign passports are already accepted as identification at airports. Moreover, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said, neither a foreign passport nor an American driver’s license is among the criteria used to determine whether the bearer will be subject to extra security screening. Further, while critics have made much of the fact that several of the 9/11 terrorists used driver’s licenses to rent vehicles and board airplanes, they were able to obtain licenses as apparently legal immigrants, if in some cases by presenting fraudulent documentation. As a result, the 9/11 Commission specifically declined to make recommendations on whether licenses should be granted to illegal immigrants, saying it was not germane to their inquiry.

Under the new policy, someone applying for a license without a Social Security number would need a valid, current foreign passport, in addition to other documents that would aid in establishing the applicant’s identity. The passport’s authenticity would be verified through new scanners installed at all DMV offices or at a central location by a new unit of specially trained personnel. In addition, under the policy, photo-comparison software will be tested in hopes of keeping people from getting multiple licenses under different names. The Spitzer policy means that New York driver’s licenses are unlikely to meet the federal guidelines being phased in by 2013 for a federally recognized license known as a Real ID, which will require, among other things, proof of legal residency. Under the federal law, at that time, the Real ID or a passport would be needed to board an airplane in the United States. In that case, New York and other states may opt to offer both Real IDs for those who want them, as well as standard driver’s licenses.