Today Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher takes Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D) to task for needlessly committing his state to implement REAL ID, the national ID law.

Fisher recognizes that REAL ID will not prevent illegal immigration, but will merely foster deepened criminality: “Maryland’s highways will soon gain tens of thousands of unlicensed motorists, thanks to an abrupt reversal by Gov. Martin O’Malley.”

O’Malley backtracked on campaign commitments to keep Maryland an immigrant-friendly state when he announced that the state would link driver licensing and immigration status. Somehow O’Malley and his secretary of transportation, John Porcari, convinced themselves (and apparently Fisher) that REAL ID requires them to refuse licenses to illegal immigrants, and that moving toward REAL ID compliance would allow them to avoid standing out:

Porcari says Maryland was forced to reject the two-tier system [in which the state would still license illegal immigrants] not because the governor is suffering from low popularity and wants to glom onto the anti-immigrant movement but because “the national landscape is shifting” and Maryland could have found itself nearly alone in resisting Real ID. But seven states are refusing to comply with Real ID, and 17 have condemned the law, which was passed after the 9/11 attacks and requires states to conduct time-consuming identity checks.

States can issue licenses to anyone consistent with REAL ID. Licenses that don’t meet the federal law’s strictures would simply have to be labeled as such.

On O’Malley’s pre-commitment to REAL ID, there are two possibilities. One is that Governor O’Malley and Secretary Porcari actually don’t understand what REAL ID requires and are ignorant of sentiment about the law among sister states. The other is that O’Malley, indeed, has abruptly reversed his professed friendliness toward immigrants.