Four bills to toughen driver's license requirements failed in 2003.
Dome is digging into recent immigration bills because the issue has come up in the U.S. Senate campaign of state Sen. Kay Hagan.
As noted previously, Hagan voted for a 2006 measure to require a valid Social Security number to obtain a North Carolina driver's license, making it impossible for illegal immigrants to get an ID.
Prior to that vote, four similar bills were killed in committee by the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate. None came up for a vote on the Senate floor, and Dome could not find any interviews with Hagan on the issue from that year.
At the time, North Carolinians could get a driver's license with a individual taxpayer identification number, which is available to illegal immigrants, or a matricula consular, a form of identification issued by the Mexican consulate.
A Senate bill and two House bills would have required a valid Social Security number or an alien registration number for a driver's license. They would have also eliminated the acceptance of the matricula consular. (The N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles stopped accepting matriculas in February of 2004 anyway.)
Another Senate bill would have required driver's licenses expire at the same time as alien registrations.
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Re: Dem. leaders killed 2003 bills
An interesting thing to determine would be the number of illegal aliens driving with a North Carolina license that caused traffic fatalities as a result of the 2001 legislation.