(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Senate has passed bills to strengthen immigration and citizenship checks for voting, for getting an Iowa driver’s license and for working in Iowa schools or in the public sector. Bills that passed unanimously would require all Iowa schools and the state licensing board for educators to verify school staff are legally authorized to work in the U.S. — and the same clearance would be required for all newly-hired employees in state and local governments as well as for anyone who applies for a professional license issued by the state.

A bill that passed the senate with wide bipartisan support would have the Iowa D-O-T check federal databases to verify someone’s a citizen or legal resident before issuing a driver’s license. Senator Tim Kraayenbrink, a Republican from Fort Dodge, says there’s an appeal process if a license application is denied after that screening, but he expects few appeals.

“The United States Customs and Immigration Service, they rank the SAVE program as 99.16% accurate,” Kraayenbrink said. Another piece of legislation that cleared the Senate Tuesday, calls on Iowa’s secretary of state to verify registered voters in Iowa are U-S citizens. Republican Senator Ken Rozenboom of Pella says the secretary of state determined 277 non-citizens were registered to vote in the 2024 General Election.

“35 of those non-citizens successfully voted in the 2024 election and five non-citizens who attempted to vote were unsuccessful,” Rozenboom said, “so that’s, I guess, to illustrate the need for continually cleaning up our voter registration lists.” Thirteen Democrats in the Iowa Senate voted against this bill. Senator Cindy Winckler of Davenport says the federal government’s SAVE database is flawed and can give incorrect information about a person’s citizenship status.

“We want eligible individuals to vote,” Winckler said, “but we do not want to misclassify or disenfranchise an individual and keep them from voting.” The Senate has unanimously passed another bill that would require passage of an English proficiency test before someone could get a commercial driver’s license in Iowa.