The greatest number of license applicants - about 21 percent - is from Pakistan.

Proposals include drug tests for driver's license applicants and elimination of legal barriers to employee drug testing.

The definition of "automatic" itself flipped: Democrats proposed that, say, a driver's license applicant be enrolled to vote unless he demurred in writing.

In New York, for example, the fingerprinting of driver's license applicants has been proposed, and rejected, a number of times.

State officials have said they are only enforcing a 1995 law requiring that driver's license applicants who have Social Security numbers must provide them.

Also, the Motor Vehicle Department began examining license applicants, releasing trooper-examiners for other duties.

Those clerks handle driver's license applicants; they may be essential to prevent public impatience with long waiting lines.

He even paid for a faxed list of the city's newest driver's license applicants, with no result.

Huge waiting lines have occurred as the reduced hours coincided with a new policy that driver's license applicants no longer need proof of legal immigrant status.

A year ago Congress would almost certainly have defended license applicants' rights to something for nothing.