Arnold's actions in the driver's licenses for illegal aliens matter so far are not as good as they could be, but it's the end result that matters.

Dan Walters thinks he won't please either side:

NEW YORK - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won boffo reviews for his prime-time Republican convention speech that extolled the virtues of fellow immigrants, but he returned to California on Thursday to veto a bill granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Schwarzenegger has not been coy about his intention to veto the licensing bill, easily the most controversial of the hundreds of measures enacted in the final hours of the legislative session that ended early Saturday. And he reiterated Thursday that the bill is deficient because it doesn't mark or color licenses of noncitizens differently, thereby making them less useful for opening accounts or other purposes...

During the debate before the vote in the Legislature, Cedillo and other advocates dwelled almost exclusively on what they said would be the traffic safety benefits of having drivers licensed and insured, while Republican critics said licensing illegal immigrants could be a security problem in an era of terrorist threats.

Neither faction wanted to talk about the real conflict, because to do so would rekindle California's divisive, racially tinged debate over the place that illegal immigrants hold in the state's economy and society - needed for their labor [I disagree --LW] but officially shunned for their illegal status. [I disagree as well. Otherwise we wouldn't have politicians pushing to give them things like licenses and voting rights --LW]

Those who back licensure clearly see it as a form of state-sanctioned quasi-legalization for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who are integral members of society, removing clouds from their daily lives and opening up the possibility of opening bank accounts and otherwise moving out of the social background...

His best hope of resolving the stalemate may lie, ironically enough, in Washington's politicians, who control immigration policy but are equally befuddled by it. Schwarzenegger wants the federal government to set a national standard for driver's licenses that ends state-level debates as part of a larger agreement on immigration and homeland security policy.

"I think they will do it after the election," he says hopefully.

I discussed this doublethink on "immigration" here. And, I said Arnold should try to reduce the number of illegal aliens in California here.

The major long-term thing Arnold could do to resolve this problem is to reduce the number of illegals in California. If he's signed on to Bush's insane amnesty plan, he should reconsider. Instead, he should put pressure on Bush to simply enforce our immigration laws.