• Illinois may give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants

    By Mary Wisniewski, Reuters

    Illinois may soon become the most populous U.S. state to grant a form of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, after the nation's growing Hispanic population boosted the power of Democrats in national and state elections on November 6.


    A bipartisan group of Illinois politicians announced on Tuesday they would propose such a law when the legislature convenes on November 27. 

    Washington state and New Mexico are the only states that currently allow illegal immigrants to get licenses. Utah allows driving permits. As the fifth most populous state, Illinois would be the biggest state to adopt such a law. 

    A California law that allows immigrants with federal work permits to receive driver's licenses will take effect January 1, 2013. 
    Supporters said the law would be good for public safety, allowing Illinois immigrant motorists to get tested on their driving skills and buy insurance. 

    "When you have a quarter of a million undocumented drivers on the road, it's definitely a safety concern," said Ron Holmes, spokesman for Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, who is backing the measure along with fellow Democrats Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. 

    Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, a popular Republican, joined Democrats at a news conference in Chicago Tuesday to support the idea, as did Republican State Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka. It also has the support of the powerful House Speaker, Chicago Democrat Michael Madigan, giving it a good chance of passage. 

    The drive to pass the law follows the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, Democratic gains in the U.S. Senate and in the Illinois legislature with strong Hispanic support. 

    Since 2010, a handful of Republican-led states, notably border state Arizona, passed laws cracking down on illegal immigrants. But after this year's election, which saw an estimated 66 percent of Hispanics vote for Obama, Democrats and Republicans have said they want to work on an overhaul of federal immigration law. 

    Illinois, like California, elected a veto-proof Democratic supermajority in the legislature this month, with Democrats now controlling all branches of government. 

    Unlicensed, uninsured drivers are involved in almost 80,000 accidents in Illinois each year, resulting in $660 million in damage, according to the Illinois Highway Safety Coalition. Unlicensed immigrant drivers cost $64 million in damage claims alone. 

    The Safety Coalition said on its website that since New Mexico made the change in 2003, the rate of uninsured motorists fell from 33 percent to under 9 percent. 

    New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, a Republican, has fought to outlaw such licenses since she took office in January 2011. She has argued that the state's law encouraged people to come to New Mexico from other states just to obtain driver's licenses. 
    Holmes said supporters of the Illinois measure are talking with law enforcement officials to make sure a license for undocumented immigrants would not be used for fraud. 

    The measure would expand to undocumented immigrants Illinois' existing temporary visitor driver's license, used by legal immigrants. The licenses are "visually distinct" from ordinary licenses, with a purple background and the words "not valid for identification" on the front, explained Lawrence Benito, chief executive of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. 

    "This is a practical, commonsense approach," said Benito. He said supporters have been talking with Republicans in the legislature to try to get their support. 

    According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the number of Latinos in Illinois was over 2 million, or nearly 16 percent of the population. 
    Republicans in Illinois who have objected to the proposed law in the past could not be reached for comment.

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  • 12 Mexican nationals busted after landing ashore in San Diego, Calif.

    NBCSanDiego.com

    Several suspected illegal immigrants were arrested early Monday after a panga landed ashore in San Diego, Calif.

    By Sevil Omer, NBC News

    Federal officials arrested a dozen Mexican nationals early Monday after a small fishing boat landed ashore on a popular stretch of beach in San Diego, Calif.


    Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ralph DeSio told msnbc.com that 12 men, all suspected of attempting to gain illegal entry into the U.S., were arrested after the boat, called a panga, was spotted about 1:30 a.m. in Ocean Beach.

    Witnesses told U.S. Border Patrol agents in San Diego that several people scrambled out of the boat, with most heading toward the shopping area of the Ocean Beach neighborhood.

    "It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen,” Taylor McDonald told NBCSanDiego.com. “There was like a bunch of them... [They] walked straight up toward the bars and stuff like nothing was wrong."

    The number of maritime smuggling incidents along California's coast has increased over the years, DeSio said, adding that smugglers have turned to the Pacific Ocean to evade beefed up security along the U.S.-Mexican border.

    It took authorities about 30 minutes to round up suspects, relying on a team of San Diego lifeguards, police officers and border patrol agents. A police helicopter searched from above to gather others who mighthave cut loose from the boat, according to NBCSanDiego.com.

    "The police officers told them to stop but none of them really stopped, they kind of just got tackled,” witness Tyler Russo told NBCSanDiego.com.

    At one point officers had several suspects on their stomachs in the sand. Some were photographed wearing baseball caps, sweatshirts and jackets.

    Read NBCSanDiego.com’s story of the arrests

    Authorities towed the boat and the case is still under investigation, DeSio said.

    While authorities didn’t find drugs from this panga incident, smugglers often use the open fishing boats to bring people and narcotics into the U.S. from Mexico, DeSio said.

    In the five coastal counties between San Diego and Santa Barbara, U.S. immigration officials recorded over 180 such cases in 2011, compared with 121 in 2010, a more than 50 percent jump, according to an analysis of data provided to NBCLosAngeles.com.

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  • Georgia Senate OKs banning illegal immigrants from colleges

    By msnbc.com staff

    Georgia's Senate on Monday overwhelmingly approved a bill to ban illegal immigrants from attending any of the state's 60 public colleges.

    The state could join Alabama and South Carolina as the only ones with such a law, provided Georgia's House also approves the bill.

    The outlook for passage there was not clear, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported, as the bill has yet to pass out of committee.

    Georgia is among six states -- the others are Arizona, Alabama, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah -- that have passed broad laws cracking down on illegal immigrants.

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  • GAO study links Arizona wildfires to illegal immigrants

    By Reuters

    PHOENIX -- A government study released on Tuesday links many wildfires in the Arizona-Mexico border region to illegal immigrant activity, a finding that Arizona Senator John McCain said backs up comments he made blaming border crossers for some of the blazes.

    The study was carried out by the independent Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the Congress, at the request of McCain, an Arizona Republican who ran for president against Barack Obama in 2008.

    It found that of 77 human-caused borderland wildfires that were investigated by federal officials from 2006 to 2010, 30 identified illegal border crossers "as a suspected source of ignition."

    Investigators found half of those fires were lit to signal for help, provide warmth or cook food, although no explicit purpose was given for the remaining fires, which it noted occurred in areas known for drug smuggling.

    It added that fire suppression activities were sometimes reduced at night "because of the perceived threat to firefighters' safety."

    The report did not say whether any illegal immigrants had been arrested or prosecuted for starting the blazes.

    McCain, who sparked a furor in June by suggesting that illegal immigrants were to blame for some of the wildfires raging near the border, welcomed the report's findings.

    "This independent GAO study again confirms what U.S. Forest Service and local officials in Arizona have long known: that some of the fires along the Arizona-Mexico border are caused by people crossing the border illegally," McCain said in a statement.

    "The report further found that firefighting activities have sometimes been delayed while waiting for law enforcement escorts as protection from armed smugglers, which could cause fires to grow larger and more damaging," he added.

    Among blazes that scorched tinder-dry forests in the Arizona borderlands this year were the Horseshoe Two and Monument fires that together burned more than 400 square miles and destroyed more than 60 homes.

    The largest blaze in the state's history, the so-called Wallow Fire, torched more than 800 square miles. Two cousins from southern Arizona, who allegedly left a campfire unattended, were later charged with starting that fire.

    The GAO report estimates that the federal government spent $33 million fighting human-caused fires along the Arizona-Mexico border between 2006 and 2010.