Congress may standardize drivers' licenses

WASHINGTON — Congress is moving quickly toward setting strict rules on how states issue drivers' licenses, requiring them to verify whether each applicant for a new license or a renewal is in this country legally.

A House and Senate conference now taking place has included the requirements, which apply to all 50 states and other jurisdictions that issue licenses, in a supplemental appropriations bill for Iraq, aides involved in the process said. The draft legislation will be finalized in the next few days and is all but certain to pass.

Earlier this year the Utah Legislature passed a bill, that has since become law, that replaces illegal immigrants' drivers' licenses with driving permits that can't be used for identification. The driving privilege card is issued to those who don't qualify for a Social Security number.

State officials complain that the new requirements will add a costly, complicated burden to the issuing of drivers' licenses, which has been their responsibility for almost a century. Civil rights organizations and privacy advocates say they are concerned that a standardized driver's license would amount to a national identification card and that a central database would be vulnerable to identify theft.

The proposed regulations would replace a provision of the intelligence bill passed in December that called on state and federal agencies to develop new rules for licenses. That law did not specifically require states to check the citizenship or immigration status of applicants.

Eleven states, including Utah, now grant drivers' licenses to noncitizens who do not have visas. There is no reliable estimate of how many licenses have been issued to noncitizens, whether in the country legally or illegally.

Some of the ideas in the new measure were rejected in the December debate. But conservative members of the House, led by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., threatened to block passage of the intelligence bill, until they won an agreement that they could try again this year. They got a pledge from the leadership to include the driver's-license measures in a must-pass bill this year.

Under the rules being considered, before granting a driver's license, a state would have to require proof of citizenship or legal presence, of an address, and of a Social Security number. It would need to check the legal status of noncitizens against a national immigration database, to save copies of any documents shown and to store a digital image of the face of each applicant.