A New York patriotic court clerk who’s vowed to not comply with a new law that grants illegal aliens the right to obtain a driver’s license revealed Thursday that his decision is rooted in his oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and his concerns about voter fraud.
“Under the 1986 Conflict Immigration Reform and Control Act, it’s illegal to hire people who are here illegally,” Erie County Clerk Michael Kearns said on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“And the memo of the sponsors of the bills state one of the reasons why they want to grant illegal immigrants a license is to get them to and from work. I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. I’m not going to violate federal law.”
Carlson asked the clerk why it appears as if very few other clerks and state officials are following his lead, Kearns admitted that some of them are scared.
“For many of the clerks, they are scared,” he said. “The governor has the power under the state constitution to remove us from office. So I do believe many of them are complying because they don’t want to lose their position of office.”
But not all of them are scared.
Kearns continued by warning that New York’s left-leaning Democrat legislators are working on a plan to institute automatic voting registration for every New Yorker who visits a local DMV.
“Even today as we are speaking, the New York State Legislature, they’re in session and they are now voting for automatic voting,” he said. “Meaning that people can come to the the D.M.V., and they’ll be automatically registered to vote. … I believe this is not about the driver’s license. This could be about voter fraud. I’m not going to be part of that.”
He was partially correct.
This Wednesday the New York Senate approved an automatic voter registration bill and sent it to the full state assembly for a vote.
However, the next day state lawmakers reportedly “scrapped” the automatic voter registration bill because of a typo, but they vowed to pursue it again sometime soon.
“We will pass this updated bill at the next available opportunity when we are in legislative session,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, both Democrats, reportedly said.
Automatic voter registration faced criticism from experts who warn that, without a thorough verification system, it will lead to illegal aliens being registered to vote.
“You’re setting the state up for a disaster,” Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the vote-monitoring organization True the Vote, advised last year before California began its own automatic voter registration program.
“They don’t seem to have a process in place to verify that people are who they say they are. It’s a free-for-all, a process that can be manipulated.” She said.
“People have been very responsive, very supportive,” Kearns continued in his interview with Carlson on Thursday. “I will continue to fight this in district court. I believe other clerks, there are other clerks out there who are now joining me in this stance saying we’re not going to issue illegals drivers’ licenses.”
“One of the things that we’ve faced — this is a security issue. I talked to Homeland Security. They’re very concerned about crime and people getting new identities.” He added.
And he wasn’t wrong about people being “very supportive.” Many people on social media posted supportive posts praising him for standing up for the Constitution.