NORWICH – It wasn’t what Governor Eliot Spitzer is calling the “hyper-partisanship” of American politics that forced him to abandon his illegal immigrant driver’s license plan, says Senator Tom Libous (R-Binghamton).
Libous claims the license plan was dropped for the exact opposite reason – because it doesn’t have enough support from Democrats, let alone Republicans.
According to a recent Siena College poll, an overwhelming number of New Yorkers aren’t in favor of it, either.
“I never seen an issue cut across party lines with no support such as this one,” the chair of the state Senate’s Transportation Committee said Wednesday.
Spitzer was proposing to allow state residents without Social Security numbers to be eligible for licenses. They would have to provie 14 proofs of identitity, and undergo stricter background checks.
The proposal was part of a three-tier plan to comply with upcoming identification upgrades that will require all U.S. residents to have federally approved I.D.’s to board planes, cross borders in North America and enter government buildings.
Rather than judge the plan on its merits, Spitzer claims Republicans derailed it in favor of partisanship and “preyed on the public’s worst fears” by portraying the license plan as a open door policy for terrorists.
“While people of good faith opposed my plan for fair reasons, some partisans unleashed a response that has become all too familiar in American politics,” Spitzer said Wednesday in Washington. “Political opponents equated minimum-wage, undocumented dishwashers with Osama Bin Laden. Newspaper headlines equated a drivers’ license for an undocumented migrant laborers with a ‘Passport to Terror’ and a ‘License to Kill.’ Based on the New Yorkers I speak to each and every day, I feel confident in saying that this rhetoric is wildly out of step with mainstream values – doing nothing to offer solutions and everything to exploit fear.”
Spitzer admits he underestimated public interest and values, but added that the Republican response, led for the last two months by Assembly Minority leader James Tedisco (R-Schenectady, Saratoga), exemplifies the “crisis of political discourse” in America, and will only jam-up any future progress.
“The consequence of this fear-mongering is paralysis,” Spitzer said.
“I couldn’t disagree with him more,” Libous said. “I opposed this plan, and continue to oppose this plan, because giving a illegal immigrants a license is wrong. Giving privileges like a driver’s license to people that are breaking the law is a smack in the face to generations of legal immigrants who came to this country and made their lives here the right way.”
Spitzer and Libous agree that the immigration problem is a federal one that’s fallen in the state’s lap to solve.
“The federal government needs to step up to the plate,” Libous said. “It’s anybody’s fault who’s been in this Congress that this country’s immigration policy has been so lax.”
In the meantime, Spitzer says one million undocumented workers will go on living in the state, and many will continue to drive.
“And we can be sure that those who beat their chests the loudest (against his plan) will still have no solution at all,” Spitzer said.