Courtesy D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles.

Tomorrow, the D.C. Council will vote on a proposal to issue undocumented immigrants driver’s licenses.

But as Aaron Davis at the Post first reported, the Council is backing away from a plan to have the licenses look the same as all others. Instead, a two-tier system will be created, where undocumented immigrants’ licenses will read “not valid for official federal purposes.”

The revised plan, which is scheduled to be voted on Tuesday by the council, now more closely resembles an initial proposal by Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), as well as similar laws passed recently in Maryland and California that allow for specially marked driver’s licenses for residents who cannot prove citizenship.

Council member Mary M. Cheh, chair of the council’s transportation committee, pushed for no distinction among District licenses and is facing criticism from some immigrant rights groups for backing away from her earlier stand. They charge that by reworking the bill, she has bowed to federal pressure to mark immigrants with a “scarlet letter” under the George W. Bush-era legislation that could identify them as being in the country illegally.

Cheh told the Post that now is not the time to challenge the federal government, who will soon begin enforcing the Real ID Act. The 2005 act tasked the Department of Homeland Security with setting minimum requirements for ID cards.

Cheh said she is still pursuing the most “benign” way to comply with the law, putting the “not valid” lettering, for example, in the “smallest font” possible on the license, and ensuring that the data held by the District’s motor vehicle department that could identify non-citizens would be kept confidential.

Despite the teeny, tiny font promise, the DC Coalition for Immigrant Rights will hold a vigil tonight “in support of equal driver’s licenses for all … residents.” Marybeth Onyeukwu, an undocumented D.C. resident who moved here from Nigeria when she was two-years-old, said in the release, “I urge the Council to make its own laws regarding local public safety issues. DHS should not interfere in what D.C. residents have already decided.”

Participants will gather at the Van Ness Metro station tonight at 6:30 and move to another location.