On Sunday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 2189, which will allow hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants to legally obtain drivers’ licenses in the state. The eligibility requirements are comparable to those expected for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (that little tidbit of ‘prosecutorial discretion’ the Obama administration unveiled earlier this year that will allow illegal immigrants who meet the criteria to obtain work permits), i.e., people who came into the country before the age of 16, are under 31 years of age, are in/have been to school or have served in the military, and have not since committed any other crimes after entering the United States. Via the NYDN:

AB2189 by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, will let the Department of Motor Vehicles issue licenses to illegal immigrants eligible for work permits under a new Obama administration policy. The bill requires the department to accept as proof of legal residence whatever document the federal government provides to participants in its deferred action program.

Cedillo said his bill will make roads safer while letting young immigrants drive to school and to work. His reasoning drew support from several Republican lawmakers, while other Republicans argued the state should leave immigration issues to the federal government. …

He said California is the first state to grant drivers’ licenses to the group singled out under the Obama administration’s policy. Cedillo praised Brown for choosing “public safety over politics” by signing the bill.

The law’s advocates argue that the law will increase public safety by ensuring that people who are here anyway can now be trained and tested as drivers without fear and that they’ll be more likely to buy car insurance, while the opposition argument runs more along the lines of, ‘Why don’t we just roll out the welcome wagon while we’re at it?’ One does have to wonder at deeply-in-the-red California’s seemingly impervious-to-fiscal-realities rush to implement programs that will come at a significant financial and bureaucratic cost to the state, without figuring out how to pay for them, especially while implicitly inviting more non-taxpaying illegal aliens to come and find sanctuary there. I wonder if any of the motivation could perhaps be similar to the federal government’s reasoning behind doing things like this? Via the Daily Caller:

Department of Agriculture personnel in the Obama administration have met with Mexican Government officials dozens of times since the president took office to promote nutrition assistance programs — notably food stamps — among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.

Writing in response to Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions’ July request for information about the USDA’s little known partnership with the Mexican government to educate citizen and noncitizen immigrants from Mexico about the availability of food stamps and other nutrition assistance programs, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack defended the partnership as a way to curb hunger in America — and the continuation of a program formed under the Bush administration in 2004.

“The Mexico-U.S. Partnership for Nutrition Assistance Initiative is just one of a wide range of USDA partnership activities intended to promote awareness of nutrition assistance among those who need benefits and meet all program requirements under current law.” Vilsack wrote to Sessions in a letter obtained by The Daily Caller.