WASHINGTON — With this year's session barely over, congressional leaders are already looking ahead to debating an issue that has been a hot potato in a number of states: whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to obtain driver's licenses in the U.S.
The issue is expected to split the new Congress, even with its bigger Republican majority, and could dash hopes for a broader overhaul of immigration policies next year. Some Republicans want to consider new restrictions only if they are part of a broader overhaul of immigration policies, including allowing millions of illegal immigrants to gain work permits for jobs Americans do not want.
Barring states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants was one of several immigration-related measures that nearly derailed the intelligence-overhaul bill that awaits President Bush's signature.
"Just too controversial," said a congressional Republican staffer. "It would have doomed the bill."
To get the bill to the president's desk, congressional leaders dropped the most controversial immigration provisions but pledged to put them at the top of next year's agenda.
The intelligence-overhaul bill contains provisions designed to make it harder to forge driver's licenses -- a form of identification that has become a de facto passport in the post-Sept. 11 era and is used to pass through security checkpoints. But it did not include a provision that many Republican lawmakers considered crucial to closing loopholes in anti-terrorism defenses: barring states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
The debate in Washington is likely to be as divisive as it has been in statehouses. Currently, 10 states allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, and a number of others have been considering relaxing their laws to allow illegal immigrants to drive.
In Indiana, which has a growing immigrant population, a state commission is studying whether the law should be changed to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses.
And Tennessee recently began issuing a "certificate of driving" to immigrants who could not prove they were in the country legally but who passed a driving test. The certificates say in red lettering: "For driving purposes only. Not valid for identification."
