Gov. Eliot Spitzer is abandoning his plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, saying that opposition is just too overwhelming to move forward with such a policy.
He came to believe the proposal would ultimately be blocked, he said, either by legal challenges, a vote by the Legislature to deny financing for the Department of Motor Vehicles or a refusal by upstate county clerks to carry it out.
Mr. Spitzer’s plan touched off a national debate over whether issuing licenses to illegal immigrants would make the state more secure or improperly extend a privilege to them that should be reserved for legal residents.
Opposition to the proposal sent his poll numbers plunging.
The decision is likely to be a relief to many of his fellow Democrats in Albany and in Washington, who feared the issue could haunt them into next year’s election season.
It’s a relief to all politicians who spend their entire careers in fear of principled issues.
#25
It is not about citizenship. It is about whether criminals should be afforded the privilege of driving.
At least even the pro-illegal-immigration people are still using the phrase illegal immigrant. even Barack Obama is using ‘undocumented workers.’
#36
Right, but the fact is, they’ll drive, if they didn’t respect the border, why the fuckawl would they respect our driving laws?
Your answer of eliminating the sub-society I mentioned is fine and dandy, except it won’t ever fucking happen. Too many people with too much power are making too much money off illegals.
You can rail against windmills til you’re blue in the face, they’re here, and until the voters decide this is important enough to start driving elections, they’re staying here. There will be no rounding up…there will be no concerted efforts to remove them…they WILL stay here.
I am not saying how I feel about this…I am stating an fact I am certain of.
My point is, *IF* they’re gonna stay here, it behooves us to know who they are, where they live, etc etc etc. I don’t really think uninsured, unlicensed illegals should be on the road…but that didn’t stop one of them from pulling out infront of me.
Luckily, the illegal was driving the car of a friend, who was here legally. The insurance company of the legal-friend ended up (after trying to say they shouldn’t be responsible for an illegal driver) admitting they held the liability, and it ended happily for me.
But the man who used to clean my office, whom I used to talk to (I speak marginal spanish) was also in an accident, and when things started turning the pressure up on him, like the high bills that he was being sued for, and the fact that if he couldn’t produce a license within 30 days, the judge was gonna order him jailed, he just picked up and moved on to a new city. Just didn’t show up to clean my office one night, and I have no clue where he went or whatever happened to him from there.
I don’t have that luxury. If I try to pick up and leave (well, forgetting the fact that I have a steady job and a house payment and family, so I really can’t leave) they would just put a warrant out on me, suspend my license, and find me when I tried to register in the new state.
The guy who cleaned my office just walked way, leaving the other driver on the hook for who knows how much money. Hope they had Uninsured motorist insurance! (BTW…trust me, get Uninsured Motorist Insurance…even if your state doesn’t mandate it. My story is not uncommon, and others are not always as lucky as I was.)
As is typical of the right wing, I hear a lot of bullshit about how these people are illegal, criminal, bad, deserve to be gutted and fed to pigs… And of course with just a hint of that classic refrain about how the liberals hate America. I never get tired of that one. And this from right worshipers at the Alter of Unfettered Capitalism. How sad.
You guys don’t give a rat’s ass about who’s legal and who isn’t. You just hate foreigners. It isn’t like you fortunate sons lost a good job in the Strawberry fields.
Mexican and other South American illegals cross over into this country because American businesses hire them. There is no difference between 20 Mexican guys in the back of a truck and twenty kilos of cocaine in the trunk of a Lexus. They come here because there is a demand.
You imagine you hear it all the time. Now hear it for real and bow to its Holy Rightness… THIS IS AMERICA’S FAULT. I BLAME AMERICA.
If you really were concerned about illegal immigration, and not stupid, then you’d quit with the mean anti-Latino BS (and yes, the photo above is racist because the photo isn’t about being illegal. It’s about being Mexican, and the caricature applies to legal citizens who are also Mexican) and start supporting a two step solution.
Pass comprehensive Federal legislation forcing ALL employers in all industries to pay all undocumented workers exactly the same wages, withhold all the same taxes, give all the same benefits, as they offer to citizens.
And because it isn’t a sin to punish with legislation, set market minimums so construction companies (as an example) can’t just suddenly say, “oh well, the market rate is minimum wage”…
…and force them to submit to every other law that protects employees.
Step Two: Enforce it.
If Mexicans, etc., cross our sacred borders onto our sacred blood soaked terra, its only because of the massive engraved invitation we issue by paying them to do it. You must support taking away the incentive to hire illegals from employers. Otherwise, you are just recreating The War on Drugs, only with brown skinned guys instead of bags of heroin.
If you aren’t going to attack the cause of the problem then give them their damn driver’s licenses because they are, after all, invited guests.
#39
Simply sitting down in the sand and saying, “Welp, they’re here. Nothing we can do now.” is affront to the thousands upon thousands of people trying to immigrate or have immigrated legally.
If we know they are capable of subverting one system, what makes you think they will not subvert another? Why in the world *wouldn’t* an illegal alien provide false information to the DMV? What are they going to do: arrest them? They are already at risk of that now. Why in the world would you think that an illegal alien would pay for legitimate insurance when they can lie and pay almost nothing for the same risk? You will run the exact same risk if you get into an accident with an illegal alien, even one with a legitimate license, because there is no way they will want to deal with law enforcement in any way no matter how small the matter.
> Pass comprehensive Federal legislation forcing ALL
> employers in all industries to pay all undocumented workers
> exactly the same wages, withhold all the same taxes, give
> all the same benefits, as they offer to citizens.
What a ridiculous idea. If you are hiring a person illegally that themselves is at risk of deportation, there is no way in hell you are going to report their pay through proper channels that can be tracked by Big Brother. Yes we should stiffen the laws against employers that hire illegals but requiring them to file proper paperwork on improper employees is ludicrous. The act of paying them for work alone is itself illegal. It would be like passing a law that says that you have to pay hitmen a fair wage.
We simply need to do a better job of enforcing the existing laws, harden the penalties for hiring illegals and make it harder for people to subvert the immigration system.
Nice one, now you’ve not got the Partida Tequila adverts anymore, you start with the Mexican bashing again!
Of course they are criminals. What part of ‘ILLEGAL immigrant’ don’t you get?
I’m not sure why you guys are celebrating. This is just a temporary postponement of the plan until after the 2008 elections. Team Hillary wasn’t happy at the fallout from Tim Russert’s questioning on the issue, so they told Spitzer to drop it.
It’s not about the drivers licenses ultimately. Spitzer was trying to DO something where everyone else is sitting on their hands. Illegal immigration is a problem but no one wants to fix the real problems.
The big problem isn’t the border it’s all the social and legal loopholes that make things easy for illegals. When people are deported they have easy and well defined channels for getting right back in. Businesses have no penalty for hiring illegals. Social programs don’t check citizenship. Etc etc.
It’s shamefully easy for illegals immigrants or even citizen criminals to acquire access to various programs without proper identification.
Until then the illegals will be here. Getting them into the DMV database is at least a high level step to knowing who these people are. And don’t give them a normal license. Change the color or put big letters on the license that say “Undocumented Immigrant”.
Of course what would stop me from using an accent from a country that is in some political strife, go to the DMV and give a false name, address, etc and get a fake ID for other illegal purposes? THAT is a problem.