Update 2/11/2020:

A bill that would grant undocumented people driver’s licenses has passed the Virginia Senate. It now moves on to the House.

Original:

A bill moving through the Virginia legislature would give undocumented residents of the commonwealth the ability to obtain driver’s licenses. Currently Virginia is the only local jurisdiction that doesn’t offer driver’s licenses to people without legal residency—Maryland has allowed it since 2013, and the District of Columbia since 2014.

On Wednesday, the bill passed through the Virginia Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, with 11 Democrats voting in favor and five Republicans voting against, reports WTOP. There’s an identical version of the bill moving through the House.

“It’s a public safety issue and also a quality-of-life issue,” Senator Scott Surovell, the bill’s chief sponsor, told the outlet. “People need to be able to drive to the doctor, take their kids to school and drive to work without fear of being prosecuted.”

While the future of this particular bill remains uncertain, its introduction and advancement is in step with the Virginia legislature’s relatively recent move to the left. In 2019, Democrats in the state won control of the statehouse for the first time in more than 20 years. The raft of recent legislation from Democrats in the statehouse, including on guns and abortion, has recently inspired one Republican lawmaker in the state to suggest that Virginia should give Alexandria and Arlington back to the District.

Surovell aid that the bill would lead to between $10 to $17 million in extra revenue for the state, per WTOP. Virginians would not be required to provide proof of legal residency to apply for their licenses—they’d only have to prove their identities using other documentation.

If the legislature passes the bill, Virginia will join 12 states and D.C. in offering licenses like this to people who don’t have legal residency in the U.S. Since D.C. made licenses available to undocumented people, the city has issued 30,628 such driver’s licenses and 14,907 identification cards.

In both D.C. and Maryland, the licenses are limited in purpose—they give permission to drive in the jurisdiction and serve as identification in the state, but cannot be used for federal identification purposes. In D.C., that means they can’t be used to enter federal buildings or board airplanes.

“This is probably the number one issue in the Latino community,” Surovell told WTOP. “The bill would basically allow about 300,000 people to obtain a driver’s license.”