New York governor Eliot Spitzer has dropped his campaign to offer driving licenses to illegal immigrants, tantamount to giving them coveted national identity cards, amid fierce opposition, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
"You have perhaps seen me struggle with it because I thought we had a principled decision, and it's not necessarily easy to back away from trying to move a debate forward," the governor told The New York Times in a Tuesday interview.
Spitzer acknowledged he believed the plan was destined to be derailed, by lawmakers or public employees who had threatened not to implement the measure.
"I am not willing to fight to the bitter end on something that will not ultimately be implemented," Spitzer told the Times. Spitzer's plan had come under fire from several quarters, including the US Department of Homeland Security and became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.
White House hopeful Hillary Clinton took flak for an apparent flip-flop on the issue. The plans Spitzer unveiled earlier this year were meant to increase road safety while providing documentation to the estimated one million people in New York state illegally. The proposals are part of a wider debate on what the United States should do about its estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, accused by some of stealing jobs and being a drain on health care and welfare systems.
New York's plan would have offered three levels of driver's licenses from next year. Among them would have been be a license to which illegal immigrants would be entitled, but which could not be used to board flights or cross borders, as US citizens are able to do with their full licenses. The United States has no national identification card, and in many situations state drivers' licenses are used instead.
Opponents slammed Democratic front-runner Clinton over the issue during a debate earlier this month when she offered apparently contradictory answers on whether she supported Spitzer's plan.