By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON -- Congress is poised to pass a law that would make sweeping changes to the nation's system for issuing driver's licenses by imposing stringent requirements on states to verify the authenticity of birth certificates, Social Security cards, legal residency visas, and bank and utility records used to obtain a license.
House Republicans attached the bill to a must-pass supplemental spending package for troops in Iraq without first putting it through the usual legislative scrutiny of hearings and debate. Should it emerge intact from House-Senate negotiations over the spending package, it could be law next month.
Touted as an antiterrorism measure, the "Real ID Act" would also overturn laws in nine states that allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. If a state does not comply with any provision of the law, its residents would no longer be able to use their driver's licenses for federal identification purposes, such as for boarding a plane.
The law, some say, would effectively turn the new driver's license into a national identification card. Its chief champion, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, says the measure would help prevent terrorists from fraudulently gaining official documents that would allow them to enter the country and move freely.
Another set of provisions would significantly raise the standard of proof that asylum applicants must meet when claiming that they have been persecuted on ethnic, religious, or political grounds. It would also grant greater discretion to Homeland Security officials to reject asylum seekers and curtail the ability of appeals courts to issue stays of deportation orders and review rejected cases.
Terrorists have "used almost every conceivable means of entering the country," Sensenbrenner said in a statement provided by an aide. "They have come as students, tourists, and business visitors. They have also been [legal permanent residents] and naturalized US citizens. They have snuck across the border illegally, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted amnesty. Terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum. We must plug these gaps."
But many critics of the Real ID Act say that it goes too far and that its language is riddled with problems that might have been corrected through the normal legislative review process.