Spitzer delivers watered down version of his plan for granting licenses to illegals

For the past several weeks, the debate has intensified over New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's plan that calls for granting the 1 million illegal citizens in New York licenses. The Bush Administration was caught off guard by what they viewed as a radical proposal and immediately became prepared to begin attacking it as posing a threat to US' national security. As a last ditch effort to avoid being subject to an onslaught of accusations that his measure was in favor of the terrorists, Spitzer decided to strike a last minute deal with the Bush Administration. As a result, Spitzer agreed to integrate the Bush's Real ID program into his plan. In its original form, the proposal represented a major step forward in the struggle for bringing the state's large illegal immigrant population out of the shadows and into mainstream society. The plan as it was announced by Spitzer over the weekend has been criticized by many as being nothing more than a stamp of approval for Bush's national ID policy. Juan Gonzalez makes a strong argument condemning Spitzer's last minute change of heart.

"They were ready to say it was a threat to national security," said one Spitzer official. "That would have undermined our whole effort."

Given the climate these days, all the federal government has to do is yell "national security" and any kind of debate is automatically cut off.

A federal condemnation would have been fatal to Spitzer's hope of providing some way for the state's 1million undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows.

The governor had something huge that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff badly needed.

The Bush administration is bent on creating a new form of high-tech national identity card, known as Real ID. A Republican-controlled Congress tacked the Real ID Act onto an Iraq war funding bill in 2005. It would link the databases of every state motor vehicle department in the country.

Real ID has created a host of privacy-rights and identity-theft issues and the billions of dollars needed to implement it would have to be paid for by the separate states. Citizen groups from both the left and the right have opposed the new law. More than a dozen states have refused to adopt it.

Considering the several manifestations that Spitzer's plan adopted before being finalized, I actually think Hillary was justified in not knowing exactly how to respond to the proposal in the recent Democratic Debate. Regardless, Hillary, along with the other Democratic candidates, have yet to clearly articulate how their proposals for comprehensive immigration reform would differ from the 'security first' emphasis of the course that the Bush Administration continues to pursue.