New York’s highest court is weighing in on the national debate on immigration, ruling that the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles can act to prevent illegal immigrants from getting driver’s licenses.

The 5–2 ruling by the Court of Appeals in Albany upheld the DMV’s rules requiring a license applicant without a Social Security number to supply more documentation than a single government letter that is easily forged.

Advocates say the policy strengthens security and the rule of law, while critics say the policy is an abuse of authority that will only make it harder to track illegal immigrants.

A group of Republican City Council members — James Oddo, Dennis Gallagher, and Vincent Ignizio — released a statement reacting to the ruling by saying, “Those who break the law in order to remain in this country illegally should not be granted the privilege of a driver’s license.”

The ruling is drawing praise not only from opponents of illegal immigration, but also from those who believe tighter controls on issuing state identification will make it harder for terrorists to traverse the country with the ease demonstrated by the hijackers of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“It is only common sense that the most requested form of identification be as secure as possible,” the executive director of the SoHo-based Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License, Neil Berro, said. “This is a big victory for homeland security.”

Others, however, warned that the state is set to lose its best database of information on those who are here illegally.

“This will essentially kick people out from the DMV database, which is one of the most reliable law enforcement tools,” a lawyer for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund who worked on the case, Jackson Chin, said. “People with expired driver’s licenses will not come forward to change their addresses. You will indeed have tens of thousands of people who we cannot identify where they live.”

The regulations, implemented on September 6, 2001, were challenged in court by a group of immigrants, some of whom are here illegally. The illegal immigrants, represented by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, argued that the DMV lacked the authority to impose the more stringent requirements.

In a dissenting opinion, two judges agreed with that challenge. They found that only the Legislature — and not the commissioner of motor vehicles — could demand license applicants to show they had papers proving their lawful status in this country.

“Through this policy the Commissioner is effectively setting immigration policy — an act well outside the scope of his authority — in the guise of verifying identity, which is clearly within his powers,” said the dissent by Judge Carmen Ciparick, which was joined by Chief Judge Judith Kaye.

In contrast, the majority found that the new regulations were not all that different from what was in place beforehand, when the DMV required non-citizens to have at minimum a note from the Social Security Administration identifying the person as ineligible for a social security card. To get that ineligibility form, the majority wrote, a person would have needed to prove lawful status in this country.

The main difference between the old requirements and the new requirements, the majority suggested, is that the document previously required was easily forged.

The majority opinion, written by Judge Robert Smith, was skeptical of any assumption that the new requirements were aimed at changing immigration policy.

“Nothing in the record suggests that the DMV’s concern about fraud is a subterfuge,” the majority wrote. “The policy of requiring DHS documentation was not the result of a post-September 11 panic over immigration; the internal document adopting the policy is dated September 6, 2001.”

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment. A spokesman for the DMV did not return a call for comment. It’s unclear whether the Spitzer administration will keep the policy, which was crafted under Governor Pataki.

New York is not the only state currently grappling with the proper level of restrictions for issuing driver’s license. A federal law known as the Real ID Act gives states until 2008 to adopt tight safeguards against fraudulent driver’s license applications. If a state fails, the federal government will no longer honor the licenses as acceptable identification cards.