A Clear Division Among Candidates

So much of the presidential nominating process is issue-free posturing, it's welcome to spot a clear division among candidates on a discrete issue.

Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) disagree quite starkly on whether illegal immigrants should be licensed — or, more accurately, on whether driver licensing and proof of immigration status should be linked.

Senator Obama supports licensing without regard to immigration status, and recently received the endorsement of La Opinion, the nation's largest Spanish language newspaper, largely for that reason. (His "Yes, we can"/"Si, se puede" rhetoric probably hasn't hurt.)

On This Week With George Stephanopolous Sunday morning, Senator Clinton said (9:09), "[M]y position has been consistent. I don't think we should be giving drivers' licenses to people who are not documented."

The right answer here isn't obvious, but it is important.

Many people believe that illegal immigrants shouldn't be "rewarded" with drivers' licenses. Fair enough: the rule of law is important. There's also a theory that denying illegal immigrants "benefits" like driver licensing will make the country inhospitable enough that they will leave. This has not borne out, however. Denying illegal immigrants licenses has merely caused unlicensed and untrained driving, with the hit-and-run accidents and higher insurance rates that flow from that.

The major reason, though, why I agree with Senator Obama is because the linking of driver licensing and immigration status is part of the move to convert the driver's license into a national ID card. Mission-creep at the country's DMVs is not just causing growth in one of the least-liked bureaucracies. It's creating the infrastructure for direct regulatory control of individuals by the federal government.

Were immigration status and driver licensing solidly linked nationwide, the driver's license would not just be a "benefit" of citizenship. It would then clearly be amenable to use as an immigration-control tool — as has already been proposed. Law-abiding, native-born citizens would more and more often be required to show ID. And it would be converted to additional uses. The federal government could condition our access to goods, services, and infrastructure on carrying and presenting a national ID, possession of which the government could make conditional on every regulatory whim that swept past.

We need to restore the driver's license to its original role — as a license to drive. American citizens should not have to submit or prove their Social Security numbers in order to get licensed. If illegal immigrants "benefit" from that, so be it. It's more important to protect U.S. citizens' liberties now and for the future than to "go after" illegal immigrants while reform of our out-of-whack immigration laws languishes.