Brown Capitulates to Hispanic Lobby; Signs Alien License Bill

California State Senator Gil Cedillo’s name is synonymous with his crusade to get illegal aliens valid driver’s licenses. Since 1998, Cedillo has made nine unsuccessful efforts to license aliens. Former Governor Gray Davis vetoed Cedillo’s bills in 2001 and 2002. Then in 2003 as part of a desperate Hispanic voter outreach ploy during the Recall Election, Davis signed Cedillo’s SB 60. When Davis lost the election, the state assembly with the encouragement of new governor Arnold Schwarzenegger repealed SB 60 before it went into effect.

Undeterred, in 2005, 2006, 2009 Cedillo made slight revisions to his original bill in various attempts to persuade Governor Schwarzenegger to support him. All failed.

Cedillo is termed out and cannot run for the assembly in 2013. Instead, Cedillo will be a candidate for the Los Angeles City Council. As what could be described as a sort of going away present, Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 2189, a bill that grants driver's license eligibility to aliens who qualify for President Barack Obama’s deferred action for childhood arrivals. [New Law to Allow Many Undocumented Immigrants to Drive, by Jim Sanders, Sacramento Bee, September 30, 2012]

I suppose that to Cedillo half a loaf is better than none. AB 2189 would only apply to about 400,000 so called childhood arrivals (age 16-31) and not, as Cedillo’s other bills would have, to the state’s entire illegal alien population.

Cedillo has consistently argued without evidence that unlicensed drivers do not pose a threat to Californian’s road safety. Yet, an AAA Foundation report found that one in every five fatal accidents involves an unlicensed driver. Read the AAA Foundation study here.

Still another report rejects Cedillo’s theory. Dan Rosenberg, whose son was killed by an unlicensed alien, wrote the well researched white paper titled: “Los Angeles Traffic, Addressing Safety Issues: What Needs to Be Done” Rosenberg’s analysis found that unlicensed drivers were involved in more than 7,600 fatal crashes — about 20 percent of fatal crashes nationwide. In Los Angeles alone, an estimated 21,000 hit-and-run collisions reported as ‘accidents’ involved unlicensed drivers.

Rosenberg concluded that in terms of hit-and-runs, Los Angeles is way above the norm. The national average is 11 percent; in Los Angeles, 50 percent.

Granting licenses to aliens is an outrage that puts the public at risk and also encourages more illegal immigration. CAPS issued an alert asking concerned citizens to express their indignation at Governor Brown’s bad decision to give more entitlements to aliens. Send your FAX here.