House Likely to OK Migrant Restrictions

A bill aimed at blocking states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants appeared headed for passage today in the House of Representatives, aided by a strong endorsement from the White House and broad support within the Republican majority.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the bill’s prime sponsor, portrayed the legislation -- which would also restrict asylum claims and complete a controversial border fence between San Diego and Tijuana -- as a matter of national security.

“It seeks to prevent another 9/11-type terrorist attack by disrupting terrorist travel,” he said on the House floor Wednesday.

The White House concurred, saying in a policy statement issued hours before debate began that the bill would “strengthen the ability of the United States to protect against terrorist entry into and activities within the United States.”

But immigration advocates, groups supporting civil and privacy rights, and state government organizations oppose the bill. They say it would make it harder for those fleeing persecution to seek asylum in this country and would endanger public safety and national security by denying driver’s licenses to millions of illegal immigrants.

The bill’s fate in the Senate is unclear. If presented as a stand-alone bill, its passage is not assured; but its provisions are likely to be attached to must-pass legislation in that chamber.

If enacted into law, the bill would kill efforts in California to allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses.

Former Gov. Gray Davis signed such a provision into law in 2003, in the heat of the recall election. But after his removal, California’s Legislature repealed the law at the urging of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had campaigned against giving illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.

Schwarzenegger vetoed a revised bill last year, but the measure was introduced again last month in California’s Democrat-led Legislature. The governor has said he will not support legislation unless he is assured that it will not make it easier for would-be terrorists to obtain licenses as a step toward gaining legitimacy in the United States.

Eleven states permit illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, and others have considered relaxing their laws.

Supporters of the House legislation, known as the Real ID bill, say it would help keep terrorists out and would ensure that, if they do slip in, they would be denied the most common form of identification used to board airplanes and travel freely.

If the bill becomes law, driver’s licenses could be used for federal identification only if the states required -- and verified -- proof of legal presence in the United States from every applicant.

The bill makes compliance voluntary -- but if a state does not comply, the licenses it issues could not be used as valid identification to board airplanes in the United States, open bank accounts or enter federal buildings.

The bill also would require states to limit the term of a driver’s license issued to a foreign visitor to no longer than the length of the person’s U.S. visa. States would have three years to comply with the regulations.

“Basically, it would impose this rigid, prescriptive, unworkable framework for dealing with these issues on the states,” said Cheye Calvo, senior policy analyst for the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, which opposes the bill. “What it’s asking states to do is simply impossible.”

Other provisions of the bill would tighten the standards for granting asylum to foreigners, raising the standard of evidence that applicants for asylum must produce to prove their claims of persecution in the nations they are fleeing, and limiting judicial review of claims rejected by immigration officials.

In addition, the bill would allow the federal government to override state and local environmental concerns and laws to plug a three-mile hole in the fence between San Diego and Tijuana -- and to build such walls anywhere along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Objections from the California Coastal Commission and local environmental groups have blocked completion of the fence in an ecologically sensitive area of the Tijuana River Valley for years.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), speaking in support of the bill on the House floor, said he was surprised that the bill’s provisions -- particularly its driver’s license standards -- were controversial.

“There was a time when identity fraud was a matter of concern principally to bouncers and bartenders,” he said. “But that was before Sept. 11, 2001.”

Without standards for driver’s licenses, he said, “the American people are needlessly put at risk.”

But Democrats assailed the law and the way the GOP majority bypassed committee scrutiny of the bill and brought it directly to the floor. They said that move was an indication that Republicans, flush with victories in the November election that saw them increase their majorities in the House and Senate, were not interested in compromise.

“The chairman did not hold a single hearing or a markup,” said Rep. James P. McGovern (D-Mass.) “Major bills are being rushed to the floor without even a passing glance by the committee of jurisdiction.”

The result in this case, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) said, was that the House was about to pass a bill filled with what he said were “anti-immigrant provisions” that were “unconscionable.”

Sensenbrenner wrote similar provisions into the House version of the intelligence reform bill that President Bush signed into law in December. They met with such resistance from the Senate that they were stripped out when the two chambers reconciled their very different versions of legislation restructuring the nation’s security community.

But in an effort to placate Sensenbrenner, the House Republican leadership and the White House promised the powerful Judiciary Committee chairman that he could bring the excised provisions back this session.

The leadership has promised that after the bill passes the House, it will be attached to the first piece of legislation expected to win easy passage in the Senate -- probably the $80-billion supplemental funding bill for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the White House is expected to send to Congress soon.

Pete Jeffries, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said the leadership wanted an up-or-down vote on the bill in the House because it believed it would pass by a wide margin.

“We’re clearly building momentum,” Jeffries said. “Hopefully, we’ll put up a big number for the bill in the vote so that we can convince the Senate side that we need to move forward.”

Jeffries said that effort was aided by the White House statement of endorsement. “It clearly illustrates that the White House supports moving forward,” he said.

But even if the bill passes the House today, it is expected to run into stiff opposition in the Senate, where many Democrats, joined by several moderate Republicans, indicated during the intelligence reform debate that they had concerns about some provisions.

“We’re hopeful that cooler heads will prevail in the Senate,” said Marshall Fitz, associate director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., which opposes the House bill.

One senior Senate Democratic leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Senate was in no mood to be sandbagged by the House on the bill.

The White House, he noted, wants Congress to quickly pass the Iraq funding bill, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill next week. If the House wants to attach Sensenbrenner’s bill to the supplemental spending legislation, he said, “it will open the door to all kinds of amendments” and bog down passage of the funding bill.

Still, opponents said Wednesday that they feared the White House had improved the legislation’s chances in the Senate by issuing a strong endorsement of its provisions.

“It’s disappointing,” said Kevin Appleby, policy director for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposes the House bill. “The president talks about wanting to protect us from terrorism by creating legal avenues through a guest worker program, then supports this bill.”

The revised asylum provision would require applicants to show that their religion, nationality, race, social group or political opinion was a central reason behind their persecution.

Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of the San Bernardino Diocese, chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, called it a “significant departure from current law” that would “require victims to know what is in the mind of their persecutors before they can prove their claims.”

In a letter he sent to every member of Congress on behalf of the Roman Catholic bishops group Wednesday, Barnes also noted that the bill would mandate that the secretary of Homeland Security waive all laws in order to expedite the construction of barriers and fences along the border between the United States and Mexico.

“Our concerns about this provision are numerous,” Barnes wrote, “including our concern that this would be a dangerously broad mandate that is almost without precedent.”

In a speech on the House floor, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) said provisions dealing with the federal government’s ability to override local laws to complete sections of border fence would waive environmental and child labor laws, among others.

“I just find this a breathtaking grab for power by the federal government,” Waxman said in an interview after he left the floor.

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Times staff writer Jordan Rau in Sacramento contributed to this report.