9/11

9/11, amnesty, Political wind, REAL ID

Senator Leahy wants terrorists and illegals to have real ID

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Signed into law on May 11, 2005, the REAL ID Act requires that a person applying for a state issued driver’s license or identification card has to prove who they are, when they were born, where they live, and that they are in the United States legally. In addition, states will be required to electronically ensure applicants hold no other valid state issued license or ID card. Specifically, the REAL ID Act says:

Beginning 3 years after the date of the enactment of this division, a Federal agency may not accept, for any official purpose, a driver’s license or identification card issued by a State to any person unless the State is meeting the requirements of this section.

The Act secures the primary identification cards used by those legally here within the United States for federal purposes. Without such a card, a person would have to show a valid passport and, if not a U.S. citizen, all required visas. If a state chooses to not comply with the Act’s requirements, then a license or card they issue must:

clearly state on its face that it may not be accepted by any Federal agency for federal identification or any other official purpose and use a unique design or color indicator to alert Federal agency and other law enforcement personnel that it may not be accepted for any such purpose.

Those licenses and IDs could not be used to board airliners or to enter a federal building.

WTC attacked

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) voted to enact REAL ID. In fact, he was on the conference committee that negotiated with the House about the bill. In addition, the Congressional Record shows this amendment to the Act was introduced less than a month before the bill was signed:

ADDITIONAL COSPONSORS — (Senate – April 18, 2005)[Page: S3817] AMENDMENT NO. 459

At the request of Mr. FEINGOLD, the names of the Senator from Vermont (Mr. LEAHY), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. WYDEN) and the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. DODD) were added as cosponsors of amendment No. 459 proposed to H.R. 1268, making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, to establish and rapidly implement regulations for State driver’s license and identification document security standards [emphasis added mine], to prevent terrorists from abusing the asylum laws of the United States, to unify terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility and removal, to ensure expeditious construction of the San Diego border fence, and for other purposes. [Ed. — Amendment 459 was “tabled” the next day]

Yet Senator Leahy now has “privacy” concerns.

Earlier this year he co-sponsored legislation (S. 717) to repeal the REAL ID Act. He would replace it with the language of a previous bill that would continue to assist terrorists and illegal aliens in avoiding detection. Specifically, his bill states it:

may not require a single design to which driver’s licenses or personal identification cards issued by all States must conform; and [Ed. — (Added here in an update) This provision is clearly designed to say all state issued licenses and ID cards could be used for federal purposes and did not have to state “not be accepted by any Federal agency for federal identification” on their face]
…
shall not preempt state privacy laws that are more protective of personal privacy than the standards, or regulations promulgated to implement this Act; and shall neither permit nor require verification of birth certificates until a nationwide system is designed to facilitate such verification.

It is no coincidence that his concerns are being made public just as the Senate considers immigration reform. On May 8, 2007, Senator Leahy made this statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he chairs:

The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial that “Real Id was always more about harassing Mexican illegals than stopping Islamic terrorists” and continued to explain how “in an effort to placate noisy anti-immigration conservatives amid the GOP’s poll-driven election panic,” the Republican House in the last Congress attached this REAL ID bill onto a “must-pass military spending bill without hearings or much debate, and Mr. Bush made the mistake of signing it.” That is from the Wall Street Journal.

Given my own concerns, I have joined with Senators Akaka, Sununu, and Tester to introduce a bill that would repeal the driver’s license provisions of the REAL ID Act, and replace those provisions with the negotiated rulemaking provisions of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

In addition, Senator Leahy complained [that under the READ ID Act]:

State motor vehicle officials will be required to verify the legal status of applicants, adding to the responsibilities of already heavily burdened State offices.

To be clear, I am not questioning Senator Leahy’s patriotism; I am questioning his judgement. He wants to repeal the REAL ID Act and the result would be states can continue to issue driver’s licenses and identifications to terrorists and illegal aliens.

9/11, amnesty, War on Terror

Immigration reform includes REAL ID repeal

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The ‘Jersey Girls’ must be racing to Washington, D.C., to angrily denounce President Bush. I am reading where they want to repeal REAL ID, a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission’s report… Wait a minute… Reading further I see it is their heroes, the Democrats led by Senator Patrick Leahy, who are trying to repeal the act.

The Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano writes today in the National Review Online:

The attitude senior congressional leaders have taken towards implementation of the REAL ID Act offers a lesson for those who actually believe that this Congress can be trusted to follow through on the promises made in the immigration-reform bill that is now on the floor of the Senate. The REAL ID Act implemented one of the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. It requires national standards for driver’s licenses, including an assurance that any identity card used for a federal purpose (like passing through a Transportation Security Administration security checkpoint before boarding a plane) only be issued to an individual who is lawfully present in the United States. The law also prompts states to adopt best practices to provide better information protection and combat identity theft, fraud, and counterfeit trafficking in identity documents. Measures in the immigration reform brokered in the Senate even acknowledge that the REAL ID requirements are vital for restoring the credibility of identity cards and the “breeder documents” (like birth certificates) that are used to obtain them [emphasis added mine].

When Congress passed REAL ID with bipartisan support [Ed. — The Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent. The House passed it by a vote of 368 to 58], it seemed pretty clear that REAL ID was real important. And so you can imagine my surprise when I was called, on almost no notice, to testify before the full Senate Committee on the Judiciary in a hearing earlier this month titled, “Will REAL ID Actually Make Us Safer? An Examination of Privacy and Civil Liberty Concerns.” Good question. Isn’t that something Congress should have done before passing the law? Well, as it happens, they did. Both houses held hearings on the proposal. Apparently, they must have missed something. The Judiciary hearing turned into a direct frontal assault on REAL ID. Before the first question had even been asked, Senator Patrick Leahy, the committee chair, announced: “Given my own concerns, I have joined with Senators Akaka, Sununu, and Tester to introduce a bill that would repeal the driver’s license provisions of the REAL ID Act.”

Support from the administration and its allies was not much better. Only one senator from the minority showed up and didn’t ask any questions. In addition, the administration provided no witnesses and has not requested sufficient appropriations to prompt states to move forward quickly to implement REAL ID.

REAL ID is in real danger of becoming bait-and-switch legislation where Congress talks tough and then fails to deliver the resources or demonstrate the resolve to follow through.

There is every reason to expect the same response to immigration reform.

It will be mildly interesting [yawn] to see who the “Girls” blame for this one. I hope they can rip themselves away from the 9/11 “truth” movement long enough to comment.