By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, June 23 (Reuters) - Several rabbis weighed in on Wednesday against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's idea for adding a distinguishing mark to driver's licenses that would be given to illegal immigrants, saying it harks back to Holocaust-era persecution of Jews.
In an open letter to Arnold Schwarzenegger, six Los Angeles rabbis wrote that his suggestion for allowing undocumented aliens to obtain driver's permits with a special emblem denoting their immigration status would subject them to "scorn and ethnic discrimination."
"You are a person of faith, an immigrant and one who has been a friend to the Jewish community for many years," they wrote to the Austrian-born governor. "In the strongest terms possible, we urge you to oppose any attempt to put hateful labels on California driver's licenses."
The letter did not mention parallels to the Holocaust. But one of the authors, Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Judea, said Schwarzenegger's proposal reminded some of the yellow stars of David that Jews were forced to wear on their sleeves in Nazi-occupied countries during World War Two.
"We can't help but recall our history of having been labeled," Moskovitz told Reuters. He said an early draft of the letter raised this issue, but the reference was deleted over concern that it might trivialize the Holocaust.
"There's not a moral equivalency here," he said. "No one is saying that Schwarzenegger is trying to put together concentration camps or anything like that."
Still, he added, Jews' history as immigrants and minorities had taught them to be wary of such labels.
"We do these things in the interest of national security, but that's not often how it plays out on the street, when a police officer pulls you over and sees that on your card or you apply for a job," he said.
There was no immediate response to the letter from the governor's office.
Schwarzenegger has long enjoyed a close relationship with Jewish leaders, having donated $1 million to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and campaigning for millions more during the past decade since asking the Nazi-hunting institute to examine his own father's Nazi past in Austria.
Jewish opposition to his driver's license proposal adds a new dimension to a debate that the former Hollywood action star seized on during his bid for governor.
Just after Gov. Gray Davis was unseated in last year's recall election, the Democratic-controlled state Legislature repealed a law that would have allowed California's estimated 2 million illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses.
Schwarzenegger campaigned against the unpopular law, arguing that the measure would make it too easy for would-be terrorists to infiltrate the state and create new identities.
More recently, the Republican governor had signaled that he would consider signing a bill that grants licenses to illegal immigrants if it addressed his security concerns.
Last week, a state Senate panel endorsed a new bill that would grant driving permits to undocumented immigrants who pass a background check, obtain sponsorship and are fingerprinted. Schwarzenegger has said that bill does not go far enough, and the issue has divided law enforcement experts.
Some state lawmakers have considered a possible compromise that would embed information about a person's immigration status in the magnetic strip on back of the license, making it detectable to law enforcement but invisible to others, a legislative said. (Additional reporting by Jim Christie in San Francisco)