Gilly backs licenses for illegal immigs

TROY, N.Y. — After once opposing it, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on her first day as a Democratic presidential candidate said she supports granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

“We have to make it possible for people to provide for their families,” Gillibrand, 52, said as she was leaving her campaign kickoff event Wednesday morning at a hometown diner in the Brunswick, just outside Troy. The position is a switch from when she was an upstate congresswoman and opposed then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s 2007 plan to grant driver’s licenses to the undocumented.

Immigration advocates in New York have made a priority of pushing Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature to pass legislation that would allow the state to issue driver’s licenses to people who don’t have Social Security numbers.

The News reported Monday the New York Immigration Coalition is planning a $1 million push on the issue.

New York Republicans ripped Gillibrand (photo) as a flip-flopper who changed her views on guns and immigration once in the Senate. They also hit her for reneging on her word in last year’s campaign that she would serve a full six-year term if reelected.

Carl Paladino, a Buffalo businessman who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010 and was a Trump New York presidential campaign co-chairman in 2016, blasted Gillibrand on Wednesday for her political metamorphosis.

“Kirsten Gillibrand is every bit as disingenuous and opportunistic today as she announces a campaign for President, as she was when she transformed herself from Annie Oakley into Jane Fonda,” Paladino said.

Once appointed U.S. senator to replace Hillary Clinton in 2009, she shifted to more liberal positions, saying she went from representing a conservative district to the entire state.

Surrounded by her husband, two children and mother, Gillibrand said she ultimately decided to run for President “because I believe the urgency of this moment now is we have to take on President Trump and what he’s doing.”

“I believe he’s literally ripping apart the fabric of this country, the moral fabric,” she said.

“It’s important to know when you’re wrong and to do what’s right,” she told reporters outside the diner while surrounded by her husband, two kids, and mother. “And I will do what’s right. And I will fight for what’s right and I don’t back down from those fights.”