The Senate just announced that driver’s licenses is one of the topics it will take up when lawmakers return for a session day next month. Reacting to a week-old policy change announced by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, senators will act on legislation to prohibit the state from issuing licenses to illegal immigrants. The governor said Social Security numbers no longer would be required to obtain licenses. That identification requirement was put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“The Senate passed a bill earlier this year that would have prevented illegal aliens from obtaining drivers licenses and we will act on a new bill when we return for a special session next month to stop the Governor’s plan,” said Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County, adding that the Assembly did not take up the legislation.  “We need theAssembly to join us.  We need the Speaker (Democrat Sheldon Silver) to bring the Assembly back into session, pass our bill, and deliver a strong message to the governor that the people of this state oppose his plan and it must be stopped.”

Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, R-Schenectady, held a news conference with county clerks from around the state today to voice their opposition to Spitzer’s decision.

“The tragic events of September 11, 2001, of which New York was at the epicenter, taught us that we must be vigilant in order to keep our State and country safe.  The
simple precaution of requiring a Social Security number to prove one’s legal status in this country is a common-sense way of helping to prevent terrorists from obtaining one of the most routinely accepted forms of identification used in this country,” said Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie.

Meanwhile, immigrants’ rights groups are standing behind the governor. “Instead of sticking their heads in the sand, the county clerks and other critics of the governor’s rational response to reality ought to be looking for ways to bring immigrants, whether legal or otherwise, out of the shadows and into the mainstream where those immigrants will not fear reporting a crime, sending their kids to school or seeking medical help in a public hospital,” said attorney Brian O’Dwyer, chairman of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center (Irish) and Asociacion Tepeyac (Mexican).