U.S. House passes ban on driver's licenses
for illegal alie
Fri Feb 11, 2005 16:08
64.140.158.51
From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA
Date: Thursday, 10FEB05 11 p.m.
U.S. House passes ban on driver's licenses for illegal aliens
This afternoon, the House passed the REAL ID Act (H.R. 418), as amended, by a vote of 261 to 161.
Thanks for your tremendous outpouring of phone calls and faxes into the House of Representatives this week.
Your pressure led to the U.S. House passing a bill that, if signed into law, should significantly reduce the level of illegal immigration into this country -- and slow population growth a bit.
1. WHAT HAPPENED.....in a nutshell
Participation by tens of thousands of citizens through the NumbersUSA website once again has made a tremendous difference.
During debate, supporters of illegal immigration complained that citizens were flooding the switchboards of Congress with phone calls urging that states stop issuing driver's licenses and encouraging illegal aliens to settle and take jobs.
We saw many Representatives -- who previously had been inclined toward forcing higher and higher population growth through immigration -- vote to reduce illegal immigration this time because they were getting so much pressure from home.
This legislation would effectively end the incredible reward that 15 states now offer to illegal aliens through drivers licenses that enable them to move easily and freely through daily commerce.
And it would pretty much put a stop to massive efforts by the open borders lobbies and the Mexican government in other states to grant licenses to illegal aliens there.
The REAL ID Act will be a tremendous help in enforcing immigration laws to protect the physical security of all Americans from terrorists and other criminals and to reduce the economic harm due to illegal workplace participation. We applaud House Leadership for fulfilling their promise to act on this important legislation that will take away one of the many magnets that currently attract foreign citizens to break our immigration laws.
2. SEND FAXES THROUGH OUR WEBSITE
You can help move this legislation forward some more by putting pressure on your state's two Senators.
Just click here to view those faxes before sending them:
www.NumbersUSA.com/fax
You can also send a thank you fax to your U.S. Representative if he/she voted for the ban today. Or you can send a fax of disappointment if your Representative voted against the ban and in favor of illegal immigration.
Please help out now. Your voice is so very important when added to that of tens of thousands of others.
3. SEE HOW YOUR REPRESENTATIVE VOTED....today and in the past
Click on this link to look at the entire vote tally on the driver's license bill:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll031.xml
If you want to see every immigration action your Representative has ever taken in the past that would increase or reduce U.S. population growth, click here:
http://profiles.numbersusa.com
Each Member of Congress gets grades based on actions taken on immigration. Look at your Representative's and Senators' Immigration Grade Cards here:
http://www.CongressGrades.org
4. WHAT THE NEW BILL DOES
The REAL ID Act, as amended, sets federal standards for the issuance of driver’s licenses and requires aliens to prove their "legal presence" in the United States. It implements many of the House-passed immigration safeguards that were stripped from the final 9/11 response bill signed by President Bush in December.
Among other critical reforms, the bill will require the expiration date of a temporary foreign visitor’s driver’s license to coincide with the visa expiration date, thereby strengthening the integrity of the driver’s license as a form of identification.
The 9/11 Commission recommended that "The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver's licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft." (Report, p. 390)
Additionally, the Sessions Amendment promotes the repatriation of all aliens ordered deported by clarifying obligations under the Department of Homeland Security’s existing delivery bond authority.
Foreign terrorists used 364 aliases and numerous U.S. driver's licenses to help them commit the atrocities of September 11th. Although the 9/11 hijackers took advantage of the gaping holes in our visa system to enter the U.S. legally, at least two of the terrorists had violated their visas and were here illegally when they murdered 3,000 Americans. If the REAL ID Act had been law at the time, their driver’s licenses and state ID cards would have expired at the same time as their visas and they would not have been able to obtain new ones with which to board the planes.
Placing minimum standards for licenses and identification cards will help fulfill our post 9/11 vows of ‘never again.’
The bill also includes asylum provisions that would ensure that our asylum system is consistent with our justice system in which the trier of fact is always allowed to use the credibility of the defendant and witnesses in deciding the case. Requiring an asylum claimant to bear the burden of proof is consistent both with our justice system and with international law, which says we must grant asylum to an alien who has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion (the five grounds agreed upon in the Geneva Convention).
The REAL ID Act was supported by numerous groups including, the 9/11 Families for a Secure America, the National Border Control Council, and the Fraternal Order of Police.
5. WHAT NEXT?
The bill will now go to the Senate for consideration, possibly as part of the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations bill.
We are going to push Senators to finally start showing their concern about illegal immigration.
But if they fail to include these great provisions in their appropriations bill, we have great hope that the House negotiators will prevail in the Conference Committee in which they will have to negotiate between the two bills.
6. READ MORE
Go to this link to read more on our website about this landmark legislation:
http://www.NumbersUSA.com
Thanks again.
-- ROY
======================
PFAW Opposes REAL ID Act
People For the American Way, DC - Feb 9, 2005
... of the more than 675,000 members and activists of People For the American Way, we are writing to voice our opposition to REAL ID Act of 2005 (HR 418), as it ...
MORE:
House cracks down on illegal immigrant drivers
Bill bars licenses for unlawful visitors in anti-terrorism effort
CLICK FOR FULL STORY:
By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC
Updated: 3:44 p.m. ET Feb. 10, 2005
WASHINGTON - The House voted Thursday to put pressure on states to stop issuing drivers’ licenses to foreigners who are illegally in the United States. Ten states now do so.
By a vote of 261-161, the House passed the bill sponsored by Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R- Wisc., that would make driver's licenses unacceptable for federal identification purposes, such as boarding a commercial air flight, unless the issuing state required the applicant to show proof of American citizenship or proof of being a non-citizen who is legally in the United States as a permanent resident or applicant for asylum.
Voting to pass the bill were 219 Republicans and 42 Democrats (mostly from the South and Midwest); opposing it were 152 Democrats, eight Republicans (including three GOP Latino members from Florida) and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders.
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R- Va., said, “We don’t tell states who they can issue drivers licenses to, that’s up to them. We do say if you want to use it for federal purposes such as getting on an airplane, you have to show what’s called ‘legal presence,'”
The legislation would also make it more difficult for foreigners who arrive in the United States seeking political asylum to win their claims.
Another provision in Sensenbrenner’s bill would speed completion of a three-mile section of the fence at the U.S.-Mexican border near San Diego.
Not an immigration bill, leaders say
In a briefing for reporters Wednesday, Sensenbrenner and other GOP House leaders made great efforts to contend that their bill is not an anti-immigration bill, but rather a common-sense way of making it more difficult for would-be hijackers to board planes and for foreign terrorists to blend in to American society.
The Sept. 11 conspirators used American driver’s licenses, rather than their Saudi and other passports as identification when boarding flights in the United States because the driver’s license made them less conspicuous, Sensenbrenner said. He noted that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had a six-month visa but obtained a Florida driver’s license good until Sept. 1, 2007. Such disparities would be banned by Sensenbrenner’s bill.
“This is not an immigration issue, it is a national security issue,” said Davis.
“This is a border security bill,” said House Rules Committee chairman David Dreier, R- Calif. “We are clearly committed to dealing with the other aspects of immigration at a later point.” Dreier said, “I personally believe we need to have some kind of guest worker program and deal with the economic demand here.” The Sensenbrenner bill “in no way diminishes our commitment to dealing with the overall issue of immigration reform,” Dreier said.
Yet in its effects, if not in its intent, Sensenbrenner’s bill would likely put a damper on immigration and make life more difficult for illegal immigrants already in the United States.
The long-running crusade by many Republicans, going back at least as far as California's Proposition 187 in 1994, to deter illegal immigration has been fundamentally altered by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Now illegal immigration, visa overstays, cross-border smugglers, and national security have increasingly become entangled issues. Concerns about terrorism make the Congress and the electorate even more willing to accept measures that will impinge on immigrants.
“The smugglers that move narcotics can just as easily move terrorists. It’s clear that this a national security problem,” said House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Duncan Hunter, R- Calif., as he praised the border fence provision in Sensenbrenner’s bill.
The effort to deter illegal immigration has sometimes been at cross purposes with President Bush's outreach to immigrants, especially Latinos, through his proposed guest worker plan.
The Bush administration issued a statement Wednesday supporting Sensenbrenner’s bill.
National ID card?
The opponents of the bill include the American Civil Liberties Union which in a letter to members of Congress called the driver’s license provision an unfunded mandate on the states which “would further the growing trend, alarming to both conservatives and progressives, of transforming driver’s licenses into de facto national ID cards.”
The driver's license issue packs a political punch: one reason Democrat Gray Davis lost his seat as governor of California was his signing of a bill to allow illegal aliens to get drivers licenses.
Click for related story
Illegal immigrants and the ID theft problem
Last September, Davis’s successor, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed a bill that would have permitted illegal immigrants to apply for California driver’s licenses. Proponents of the bill, such as California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a Democrat, said it would have helped ensure that all drivers in the state were tested for ability to drive, were licensed, and carried insurance.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, several states including Arizona, Florida, Minnesota and Ohio, have already enacted legislation that connects expiration of an individual's driver's license to the expiration of his visa, if the person is a foreigner visiting the United States. Rhode Island and Michigan have passed laws that require driver's license applicants to submit proof that they are in the United States legally.
The NCSL opposes Sensenbrenner's bill. The group's leaders said this week the measure would "threaten to handcuff state officials with unworkable, unproven, costly mandates that compel states to enforce federal immigration policy rather than advance the paramount objective of making state-issued identity documents more secure and verifiable."
Also drawing fire from the ACLU and the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association is the asylum part of Sensenbrenner’s bill. The immigration lawyers’ group argues that asylum applicants “already undergo more probing security checks than any other applicants for admission to this country.” Sensenbrenner’s bill “would surely mean that deserving asylum applicants are returned to face the persecution they fled.”
Sensenbrenner said Wednesday his asylum provision is designed to remedy a decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which “makes it practically impossible for an immigration judge to judge the credibility of the (asylum) applicant and the witnesses. …. The asylum reform provision in this legislation allows the judges to say ‘no’ when they’ve concluded that there is a fraudulent application.”
In fiscal year 2004, the government approved 10,613 applications for asylum, while denying 9,080. If granted asylum, a foreign citizen can become a lawful permanent resident after living in the United States for one year.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
Date: Thursday, 10FEB05 11 p.m.
U.S. House passes ban on driver's licenses for illegal aliens
This afternoon, the House passed the REAL ID Act (H.R. 418), as amended, by a vote of 261 to 161.
Thanks for your tremendous outpouring of phone calls and faxes into the House of Representatives this week.
Your pressure led to the U.S. House passing a bill that, if signed into law, should significantly reduce the level of illegal immigration into this country -- and slow population growth a bit.
1. WHAT HAPPENED.....in a nutshell
Participation by tens of thousands of citizens through the NumbersUSA website once again has made a tremendous difference.
During debate, supporters of illegal immigration complained that citizens were flooding the switchboards of Congress with phone calls urging that states stop issuing driver's licenses and encouraging illegal aliens to settle and take jobs.
We saw many Representatives -- who previously had been inclined toward forcing higher and higher population growth through immigration -- vote to reduce illegal immigration this time because they were getting so much pressure from home.
This legislation would effectively end the incredible reward that 15 states now offer to illegal aliens through drivers licenses that enable them to move easily and freely through daily commerce.
And it would pretty much put a stop to massive efforts by the open borders lobbies and the Mexican government in other states to grant licenses to illegal aliens there.
The REAL ID Act will be a tremendous help in enforcing immigration laws to protect the physical security of all Americans from terrorists and other criminals and to reduce the economic harm due to illegal workplace participation. We applaud House Leadership for fulfilling their promise to act on this important legislation that will take away one of the many magnets that currently attract foreign citizens to break our immigration laws.
2. SEND FAXES THROUGH OUR WEBSITE
You can help move this legislation forward some more by putting pressure on your state's two Senators.
Just click here to view those faxes before sending them:
www.NumbersUSA.com/fax
You can also send a thank you fax to your U.S. Representative if he/she voted for the ban today. Or you can send a fax of disappointment if your Representative voted against the ban and in favor of illegal immigration.
Please help out now. Your voice is so very important when added to that of tens of thousands of others.
3. SEE HOW YOUR REPRESENTATIVE VOTED....today and in the past
Click on this link to look at the entire vote tally on the driver's license bill:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll031.xml
If you want to see every immigration action your Representative has ever taken in the past that would increase or reduce U.S. population growth, click here:
http://profiles.numbersusa.com
Each Member of Congress gets grades based on actions taken on immigration. Look at your Representative's and Senators' Immigration Grade Cards here:
http://www.CongressGrades.org
4. WHAT THE NEW BILL DOES
The REAL ID Act, as amended, sets federal standards for the issuance of driver’s licenses and requires aliens to prove their "legal presence" in the United States. It implements many of the House-passed immigration safeguards that were stripped from the final 9/11 response bill signed by President Bush in December.
Among other critical reforms, the bill will require the expiration date of a temporary foreign visitor’s driver’s license to coincide with the visa expiration date, thereby strengthening the integrity of the driver’s license as a form of identification.
The 9/11 Commission recommended that "The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver's licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft." (Report, p. 390)
Additionally, the Sessions Amendment promotes the repatriation of all aliens ordered deported by clarifying obligations under the Department of Homeland Security’s existing delivery bond authority.
Foreign terrorists used 364 aliases and numerous U.S. driver's licenses to help them commit the atrocities of September 11th. Although the 9/11 hijackers took advantage of the gaping holes in our visa system to enter the U.S. legally, at least two of the terrorists had violated their visas and were here illegally when they murdered 3,000 Americans. If the REAL ID Act had been law at the time, their driver’s licenses and state ID cards would have expired at the same time as their visas and they would not have been able to obtain new ones with which to board the planes.
Placing minimum standards for licenses and identification cards will help fulfill our post 9/11 vows of ‘never again.’
The bill also includes asylum provisions that would ensure that our asylum system is consistent with our justice system in which the trier of fact is always allowed to use the credibility of the defendant and witnesses in deciding the case. Requiring an asylum claimant to bear the burden of proof is consistent both with our justice system and with international law, which says we must grant asylum to an alien who has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion (the five grounds agreed upon in the Geneva Convention).
The REAL ID Act was supported by numerous groups including, the 9/11 Families for a Secure America, the National Border Control Council, and the Fraternal Order of Police.
5. WHAT NEXT?
The bill will now go to the Senate for consideration, possibly as part of the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations bill.
We are going to push Senators to finally start showing their concern about illegal immigration.
But if they fail to include these great provisions in their appropriations bill, we have great hope that the House negotiators will prevail in the Conference Committee in which they will have to negotiate between the two bills.
6. READ MORE
Go to this link to read more on our website about this landmark legislation:
http://www.NumbersUSA.com
Thanks again.
-- ROY
======================
PFAW Opposes REAL ID Act
People For the American Way, DC - Feb 9, 2005
... of the more than 675,000 members and activists of People For the American Way, we are writing to voice our opposition to REAL ID Act of 2005 (HR 418), as it ...
MORE:
House cracks down on illegal immigrant drivers
Bill bars licenses for unlawful visitors in anti-terrorism effort
CLICK FOR FULL STORY:
By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC
Updated: 3:44 p.m. ET Feb. 10, 2005
WASHINGTON - The House voted Thursday to put pressure on states to stop issuing drivers’ licenses to foreigners who are illegally in the United States. Ten states now do so.
By a vote of 261-161, the House passed the bill sponsored by Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R- Wisc., that would make driver's licenses unacceptable for federal identification purposes, such as boarding a commercial air flight, unless the issuing state required the applicant to show proof of American citizenship or proof of being a non-citizen who is legally in the United States as a permanent resident or applicant for asylum.
Voting to pass the bill were 219 Republicans and 42 Democrats (mostly from the South and Midwest); opposing it were 152 Democrats, eight Republicans (including three GOP Latino members from Florida) and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders.
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R- Va., said, “We don’t tell states who they can issue drivers licenses to, that’s up to them. We do say if you want to use it for federal purposes such as getting on an airplane, you have to show what’s called ‘legal presence,'”
The legislation would also make it more difficult for foreigners who arrive in the United States seeking political asylum to win their claims.
Another provision in Sensenbrenner’s bill would speed completion of a three-mile section of the fence at the U.S.-Mexican border near San Diego.
Not an immigration bill, leaders say
In a briefing for reporters Wednesday, Sensenbrenner and other GOP House leaders made great efforts to contend that their bill is not an anti-immigration bill, but rather a common-sense way of making it more difficult for would-be hijackers to board planes and for foreign terrorists to blend in to American society.
The Sept. 11 conspirators used American driver’s licenses, rather than their Saudi and other passports as identification when boarding flights in the United States because the driver’s license made them less conspicuous, Sensenbrenner said. He noted that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had a six-month visa but obtained a Florida driver’s license good until Sept. 1, 2007. Such disparities would be banned by Sensenbrenner’s bill.
“This is not an immigration issue, it is a national security issue,” said Davis.
“This is a border security bill,” said House Rules Committee chairman David Dreier, R- Calif. “We are clearly committed to dealing with the other aspects of immigration at a later point.” Dreier said, “I personally believe we need to have some kind of guest worker program and deal with the economic demand here.” The Sensenbrenner bill “in no way diminishes our commitment to dealing with the overall issue of immigration reform,” Dreier said.
Yet in its effects, if not in its intent, Sensenbrenner’s bill would likely put a damper on immigration and make life more difficult for illegal immigrants already in the United States.
The long-running crusade by many Republicans, going back at least as far as California's Proposition 187 in 1994, to deter illegal immigration has been fundamentally altered by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Now illegal immigration, visa overstays, cross-border smugglers, and national security have increasingly become entangled issues. Concerns about terrorism make the Congress and the electorate even more willing to accept measures that will impinge on immigrants.
“The smugglers that move narcotics can just as easily move terrorists. It’s clear that this a national security problem,” said House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Duncan Hunter, R- Calif., as he praised the border fence provision in Sensenbrenner’s bill.
The effort to deter illegal immigration has sometimes been at cross purposes with President Bush's outreach to immigrants, especially Latinos, through his proposed guest worker plan.
The Bush administration issued a statement Wednesday supporting Sensenbrenner’s bill.
National ID card?
The opponents of the bill include the American Civil Liberties Union which in a letter to members of Congress called the driver’s license provision an unfunded mandate on the states which “would further the growing trend, alarming to both conservatives and progressives, of transforming driver’s licenses into de facto national ID cards.”
The driver's license issue packs a political punch: one reason Democrat Gray Davis lost his seat as governor of California was his signing of a bill to allow illegal aliens to get drivers licenses.
Click for related story
Illegal immigrants and the ID theft problem
Last September, Davis’s successor, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed a bill that would have permitted illegal immigrants to apply for California driver’s licenses. Proponents of the bill, such as California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a Democrat, said it would have helped ensure that all drivers in the state were tested for ability to drive, were licensed, and carried insurance.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, several states including Arizona, Florida, Minnesota and Ohio, have already enacted legislation that connects expiration of an individual's driver's license to the expiration of his visa, if the person is a foreigner visiting the United States. Rhode Island and Michigan have passed laws that require driver's license applicants to submit proof that they are in the United States legally.
The NCSL opposes Sensenbrenner's bill. The group's leaders said this week the measure would "threaten to handcuff state officials with unworkable, unproven, costly mandates that compel states to enforce federal immigration policy rather than advance the paramount objective of making state-issued identity documents more secure and verifiable."
Also drawing fire from the ACLU and the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association is the asylum part of Sensenbrenner’s bill. The immigration lawyers’ group argues that asylum applicants “already undergo more probing security checks than any other applicants for admission to this country.” Sensenbrenner’s bill “would surely mean that deserving asylum applicants are returned to face the persecution they fled.”
Sensenbrenner said Wednesday his asylum provision is designed to remedy a decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which “makes it practically impossible for an immigration judge to judge the credibility of the (asylum) applicant and the witnesses. …. The asylum reform provision in this legislation allows the judges to say ‘no’ when they’ve concluded that there is a fraudulent application.”
In fiscal year 2004, the government approved 10,613 applications for asylum, while denying 9,080. If granted asylum, a foreign citizen can become a lawful permanent resident after living in the United States for one year.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
