Bills seeking to deny many state benefits to illegal immigrants never made it out of committee this session. But Senate Republicans in the final hours almost succeeded in passing a floor amendment that would have made applicants for commercial driver?s licenses prove their legal presence in Maryland.
The amendment failed by one vote, 24-to-23, but Gov. Martin O?Malley said Tuesday that he planned to wait until 2011 to comply with the federal REAL ID Act requiring proof of legal residence to get a nationally accepted driver?s license.
Senate GOP leader David Brinkley of Frederick and Carroll counties said Maryland is now one of only five states that allow undocumented aliens to get a license. “Even the District of Columbia requires legal presence,” Brinkley told his colleagues. “We need to make sure they?re here legally.”
But Senate Judicial Proceedings Chairman Brian Frosh said the amendment was “a good way to kill this bill,” which was necessary to comply with federal rules and gain $34 million in federal transportation dollars.
Sen. Lowell Stoltzfus, a Lower Shore Republican, called the state “an embarrassment.”
“We have become a mecca” for illegal aliens and a potential haven for terrorists, she said.
Stoltzfus said a relative who works at the Motor Vehicle Administration told him that “van loads of out-of-state people” come to MVA offices for licenses.
Sen. Richard Madaleno, a Montgomery County Democrat, argued that giving driver?s licenses to people regardless of their immigration status improves road safety by forcing them to pass driving tests.
Responding to a question from The Examiner, O?Malley said he thought it was appropriate to wait three years to implement the documentation requirements of the REAL ID Act.
When a new president takes office in January, O?Malley said, “You?re going to see our country addressing the issue of border security and [immigration] enforcement at a national level rather than heaping all of this on local MVAs todeal with. Whoever the new president, she or he is going to have to deal with that issue.”
