The measure, known as the Green Light Law, passed last summer and it’s expected that 80,000 illegal immigrants across the state will be issued valid New York State driver’s licenses:

The state will issue only standard driver’s licenses to those immigrants, which means they won’t be able to obtain trucker’s licenses or other commercial licenses. The standard licenses also won’t meet federal standards for identification and so the holders won’t be able to use them to board airplanes or enter federal facilities. Under the law, these licenses also “shall be visually identical” to standard licenses issued to U.S. citizens.

[…]

The Green Light Law also allows new kinds of records to be used by immigrants to apply for licenses. These include an unexpired passport from another country, an unexpired identification number from a consulate, and a foreign driver’s license that is valid or expired for less than 24 months. If an applicant doesn’t have a Social Security number, they need to sign an affidavit that they hadn’t been issued one.

Even the federal government would need a court order to obtain these records. The law requires that most of the records to eventually be destroyed, and supporters expect that would happen before court orders could be issued. The documentation is specifically identified as not being a public record under the law.

The destruction of documents used to obtain the license is prompted by the Trump administration’s threat to use state records to identify and deport undocumented immigrants, said sponsors of the law.

A few interesting things of note:

“The Supreme Court on Friday found that prosecutors have to prove that an individual alleged to have illegally possessed a firearm must know that they are part of a group banned from having the gun in the first place.”
In a 7-2 decision the justices said in a crime where the status of a person is the “crucial element” to the offense, the government must prove the person was aware of that. Otherwise, it might just be an innocent mistake. The ruling could affect thousands of previous convictions.

  • Those in the country who entered illegally are given the benefit of the doubt concerning illegal possession but American citizens are not.

Rewarding those who enter illegally with licenses that look virtually indistinguishable to licenses held by citizens help or hurt the effort to prevent prohibited people from purchasing firearms? Or will it be argued by the left that it’s anti-immigrant to deny illegal aliens a right to protect themselves enjoyed by citizens? Last June California rushed the implementation of REAL ID after they created a huge problem by issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants:

Gun owners are now having to jump through hoops, at the last minute, because California decided to meddle down the identification process and provide driver’s licenses to anyone and everyone. Now California gun owners are being forced to get REAL IDs because the state wanted to treat everyone as a citizen.

New York has REAL ID, but do you trust the government’s assurances that everything is under control — the same government who, due to an admitted clerical error, allowed the Charleston murderer to buy his gun:

Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon told The Associated Press on Monday that a clerk at his jail entered in the incorrect location for Roof’s drug arrest in February. That meant an FBI examiner using records from a state database couldn’t find the details about the arrest when Roof wanted to buy a gun.

(A waiting period would not have solved this; the error was only uncovered after the massacre because of it.)

Why is the government playing with public safety by convoluting the veracity of legal identification?

*Updated to add:

In the aftermath of the rampage, which the FBI is treating as a terrorist attack, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis questioned whether foreigners should be allowed to buy guns. 

[…]

Law enforcement officials from nations friendly to the United States who are here on official business as well as foreigners who have entered the U.S. through the visa waiver program are among those exempted from the laws against foreigners buying weapons.

In Florida, like many other states, foreigners and non-residents can buy a hunting license. Getting one requires no background check, and it can be done online. With that license in hand, a foreigner can then purchase a firearm, provided the would-be buyer can show the dealer proof that he or she is living in the state.

It is at that point that the person would have to undergo a background check.

If only Democrats weren’t against the measures preventing this from occurring and spending their time trying to further penalizing law-abiding American citizens.

*More:

Details here.

Also:

So if the alien gets a hunting license, from any state (not just the one he’s in), he’s exempt from the ban until the license expires. That’s apparently true regardless of whether he goes hunting, or plans to go hunting, or shoots with the gun with which he will hunt, or buys a gun with which he will hunt.

[…]

But this should give you a sense of what’s potentially dangerous (even if not of what’s 100% safe)—and a sense of just how odd gun laws can be.