Immigration Debate Is Likely to Turn on Driver’s Licenses

With this year’s session barely over, congressional leaders are already looking ahead to debating an issue that has been a hot potato in a number of states: whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to obtain driver’s licenses in the U.S.

The issue is expected to split the new Congress, even with its bigger Republican majority, and could dash hopes for a broader overhaul of immigration policies next year. Some Republicans want to consider new restrictions only if they are part of a broader overhaul of immigration policies, including allowing millions of illegal immigrants to gain work permits for jobs Americans do not want.

Barring states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants was one of several immigration-related measures that nearly derailed the intelligence-overhaul bill that awaits President Bush’s signature.

“Just too controversial,” said a congressional Republican staffer. “It would have doomed the bill.”

To get the bill to the president’s desk, congressional leaders dropped the most controversial immigration provisions but pledged to put them at the top of next year’s agenda.

The intelligence-overhaul bill contains provisions designed to make it harder to forge driver’s licenses -- a form of identification that has become a de facto passport in the post-Sept. 11 era and is used to pass through security checkpoints. But it did not include a provision that many Republican lawmakers considered crucial to closing loopholes in anti-terrorism defenses: barring states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

The debate in Washington is likely to be as divisive as it has been in statehouses. Currently, 10 states allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, and a number of others have been considering relaxing their laws to allow illegal immigrants to drive.

In Indiana, which has a growing immigrant population, a state commission is studying whether the law should be changed to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

And Tennessee recently began issuing a “certificate of driving” to immigrants who could not prove they were in the country legally but who passed a driving test. The certificates say in red lettering: “For driving purposes only. Not valid for identification.”

As evidence of the differences among Republicans on the issue, Bush’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has supported legislation -- so far without success -- to allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses. But California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fellow Republican, vetoed a bill that would have allowed the state’s estimated 2 million illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

The president himself has yet to publicly take a stand on the issue.

Some Republicans are uneasy about taking up a measure that could be perceived as anti-immigrant at a time when their party is trying to court Latino voters. Some Republicans also see the legislation as a federal intrusion on states’ rights.

“The overall question of immigration may be one of the most divisive issues facing the Republican Party,” said Marshall Wittmann, a former Senate GOP staffer now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Some usual GOP supporters -- the agricultural and insurance industries -- could end up lobbying against a ban on driver’s licenses for undocumented workers because it could make it more difficult for employees to get to work and less likely for drivers to buy insurance.

“Immigration is going to be a very difficult issue,” said Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), whom an aide described as undecided on the licensing issue. “Just the issue of driver’s licenses has divisions, even among conservatives.”

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who equates giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants with condoning lawbreaking, said legislation could rise or fall according to “how it plays with the general public.”

“If opponents of immigration reform can portray it as a racist issue, then they’ll probably peel off some Republicans,” he said. “If it’s portrayed as an issue of national security, then there will probably be more unanimity.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who has pushed for tightening immigration policies, has portrayed the driver’s license measure as a national security issue.

Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a lobbying group that seeks to stop illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration, said denying driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants enjoyed broad public support and warned that lawmakers who opposed it risked political peril.

“If there is a significant [terrorist] incident ... there will be a huge political cost that most officials are not going to be comfortable paying,” he said.

Immigrant rights activists are gearing up for the fight.

“For immigrants, there are few issues that are more emotional than the driver’s license issue,” said Josh Bernstein, director of federal policy for the National Immigration Law Center. “There are some really basic issues there: people’s identity, their legitimacy as human beings.”

Bernstein added that denying driver’s licenses was bad for road safety. “It really increases the number of hit-and-run accidents,” he said, “and it contributes to identity theft. When you close off one avenue to getting a legitimate document, you force people into another avenue, which is bad for security because you fuel a market in false documents.”

Sensenbrenner plans to introduce legislation with the stripped-out immigration provisions on the day that Congress returns. In addition to the driver’s license provision, the measures would tighten asylum rules and complete a fence along the California-Mexico border.

But efforts to change immigration laws are likely to face resistance in the Senate, not only from Democrats who could filibuster a bill, but from Republicans who are likely to try to make efforts to restrict driver’s licenses part of broader legislation establishing a guest-worker program.

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Times staff writer Maura Reynolds contributed to this report.