HAL NETKIN -- Watchdog America, 6609 Vesper Avenue, Van Nuys, CA 91405 -- Tel 520-366-5425 Fax 520-366-5512

Arnold SchwartzeneggerSeptember 9, 2008

State Capital Building

Sacramento, CA 95814       RE:Open letter opposing driver licenses for illegal aliens.

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Dear Governor Schwartzenegger:       <http://keepstuff.homestead.com/LetterToArnold8907.html>

I sent the first version of this letter to you on December 25, 2003 which I believe was instrumental in persuading you to veto driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Now that State Senator Gil Cedillo is again trying to revive driver's licenses for illegal aliens, I see fit to send this letter to urge you to again veto Cedillo's Bill:

I was inspired to write to you after Martha Lopez, a Mexican citizen and a victim of a deadbeat husband, contacted me through my website with an email letter urging me to write to you of her experience (see attachment 1).

In any future discussion with Senator Gil Cedillo regarding the reinstatement of SB60 or any other bill to allow illegal aliens to be eligible to receive valid California driver licenses, please take into consideration the issue of tracking deadbeat dads.

In 1993, local and state attorneys had already been using social security numbers registered with the DMV as a means of tracking deadbeat dads. But while the DMV asked for social security numbers, it was not a requirement. To improve the tracking (and also to address illegal immigration concerns), the California Legislature passed the law made effective in 1994, to make it mandatory that valid social security numbers be provided by driver license applicants (See 1993 and 2003 L.A. Times articles,  attachment 2 and attachment 3).

If illegal aliens were to be allowed to receive driver licenses WITHOUT furnishing a valid social security number, while U.S. citizens and legal resident aliens WOULD, there would be a situation where the law was being applied unequally -- and thus unconstitutionally. This would be a scenario where Illegal aliens would virtually have more rights than citizens. Had SB60 been passed, Citizens and legal alien resident deadbeat dads would be tracked (as they presently are) through the DMV by social security numbers, while there would be no way to track illegal alien deadbeat dads and bigamists.

Let me be clear on this point: Of course the vast majority of illegal alien parents are not deadbeats -- but just as our own citizenry has its share of bad apples, so do illegal aliens -- and there is no way of knowing the good apples from the bad ones.

Mr. Cedillo has said that the ITIN (individual taxpayer identification number) that illegal aliens use to file tax returns, are equivalent to social security numbers, and could be used instead. But according to an IRS Newsroom article posted on their website (see attachment 4), they have sent letters to all 50 governors, asking them to instruct their motor vehicles agencies not to accept the ITINs as valid identification (you should have received one such letter).

If Mr. Cedillo gets his way in passing a driver license bill for illegal aliens with a so called "security" provision, it would open the door for Mexicans who are already deadbeat dads in Mexico, to illegally cross the border into California where they would be given "deadbeat dad" amnesty in the form of a new unrecorded identification through a driver license. Moreover, after receiving a driver license without the social security number requirement, illegal aliens who had already abandoned their families in Mexico would be free to start new families in California to become deadbeat dads for a second time without any way to track them.

In addition to jeopardizing the homeland security, the passage of any bill to give driver licenses to illegal aliens would undermine the efforts by local and state attorneys to track deadbeat dads.

Please do the right thing -- veto SB60 or similar bills.

Sincerely

Hal Netkin

CC (Hard Copies): Gov Schwartzenegger, Senator Gil Cedillo; Sheriff Lee Baca; District Attorney, Steve Cooley; President, California National Organization for Women (CA NOW);  and other unnamed recipients.