By Stephen Dinan
November 6, 2007
Voters oppose driver’s licenses for illegal aliens by a nearly five-to-one margin, a new Fox 5/Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports poll finds.
As immigration politics explode into the presidential race, polls show Americans are taking a hard line on benefits for illegal aliens, including opposing driver’s licenses and such taxpayer-funded benefits as scholarships at state colleges for illegal-alien students.
The new poll found 77 percent of the adults surveyed opposed making driver’s licenses available to illegal aliens, while just 16 percent supported the idea.
Licenses fared poorly across party lines, including near-blanket opposition among self-identified Republicans, at 88 percent. Among independents and Democrats, it was still overwhelmingly unpopular, drawing 75 percent and 68 percent opposition, respectively.
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer in September proposed adding New York to the list of seven states that offer licenses to illegal aliens, and the issue has refused to die down since.
Most Democratic presidential candidates have embraced the policy, including front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguing it’s a matter of road safety and a valid response to the federal government’s failure to give a path to citizenship to illegal aliens.
But those on the other side, including Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Christopher J. Dodd and the entire Republican presidential field, oppose the idea.
“I think we have to quit inducing people to come and stay if they’re illegal,” said former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, one of the Republican candidates.
