There are approximately 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. What are they all doing here? Mostly they are doing the same thing you and I are doing; they are going to work every day and trying to earn a living. They are taking their kids to school. They are going to church on Sunday.

And unless they happen to live in a very urban setting, they are doing all these things in their cars. As a society, we appear to have two choices: we can either treat them like criminals, arrest them, separating families, and deport them all, or we can take steps to integrate them into our society as full-fledged citizens.

It strikes me that the main difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants is that the former are wealthy and the latter are poor. Legal immigrants come here to be engineers, doctors, and computer technicians. Illegal immigrants come here to be day laborers, farm workers, and waiters. Not only does arrest and deportation seem incredibly expensive and impractical, but also, given how few Americans work in agriculture and how many of us rely on take-out food, I am afraid deportation might lead to many Americans starving.

Until the global economy does something to eliminate poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, illegal immigrants are going to be a permanent feature of American life. If they are going to be here and they are going to be driving, it only makes sense that they pass a drivers test and get a drivers license. Governor Spitzer's plan is not an endorsement of criminal conduct. It is simply a practical solution to part of a larger problem that is not going to be solved by simply labeling people criminals and closing our eyes to economic and political forces that created this situation.

MATTHEW J. FUSCO, CANANDAIGUA