LOS ANGELES -- When Alberto Fraire drives past a police car these days, he no longer worries about steep fines, or perhaps being hauled to jail and tangling with the immigration system.
When California began issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens this year, he was one of the first in line.
"There's a huge sense of relief now; it's a psychological thing," said Fraire, 37, who came to the United States with his parents from Mexico more than 25 years ago and recently leased a new black BMW to celebrate receiving his license in May.
"I am not completely secure, but I don't have to worry every time I get into my car."
Fraire is part of an extraordinary milestone. In the first six months of this year, more than half of the new driver's licenses issued by California went to illegal aliens like him.
Even now, months after the program went into effect, lines regularly begin at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Los Angeles by 6 a.m., a sign of the continuing changes in the state's population.
Department officials predict that they will issue nearly 1.5 million licenses to illegal aliens within three years.
Of the 883,000 total licenses issued from January to the end of July, 443,000 were granted to illegal aliens, the officials said.
Many in the state applaud the license program, as well as other efforts by California to integrate illegal aliens into the economy, saying it simply reflects the demographic reality.
While an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws has languished in Congress, many illegal aliens have established themselves in California over decades.
Thanks to recent legislative measures, they can receive financial aid and student loans to attend state universities and can be approved to practice more than 40 professions, including law, architecture and dentistry.
Fraire, for example, works as an electrician and plans to apply for a contractor's license so he can open his own business.
Most of the alien drivers who are now getting their licenses have been on the roads for years, usually driving registered cars with insurance to minimize the possibility of steep fines or of having their cars impounded.
But critics said that with measures like the driver's license program, the state is interfering with federal policy.
They argue that such laws will only entice more people to enter the country illegally, increasing the need for public spending.
"It creates even more of a magnet in what is already basically a sanctuary state," said Joe Guzzardi, a spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, which advocates stricter immigration policies.
"These are very tangible rewards to people who have knowingly and willingly violated the law."
Still, nearly 65 percent of the state's residents see immigration as a net benefit to the state, according to a January poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based research group.
Many of the laws offering benefits of various kinds have sailed through the state Legislature with little controversy, often with support from both parties.
California is hardly alone in offering benefits to illegal aliens; a dozen states allow them to get driver's licenses, and more offer in-state tuition rates at public universities.
But no other state's efforts come close to the breadth of those California officials have pursued.
Under the budget approved this year, children from low-income families, regardless of their immigration status, will receive subsidized health care.
Lawmakers are also considering legislation to allow illegal aliens to pay for health insurance through the state's public exchange.
And a bill that would give agricultural workers permits and protect them from deportation, the kind of policy that has historically been in the federal domain, cleared its first legislative hurdle with nearly unanimous support.
Huntington Park, a suburb of Los Angeles, is moving this week to appoint illegal aliens to two unpaid advisory board positions.
"If Congress isn't going to act, this state will find its own way," said Assemblyman Luis Alejo, a Democrat and the author of the driver's license legislation and the agricultural bill.
In 2013, after California's Legislature approved the plan to issue the licenses, officials spent nearly a year working out the details, including what the licenses would look like and what identification documents would be accepted.
Initially, officials worried that eligible illegal aliens would not try to obtain licenses for fear that it was a trap.
Instead, in January, when the licenses became available, lines of applicants stretched around Department of Motor Vehicles offices.
The state hired 1,000 new workers and opened four offices specifically to help with the new licenses.
A Section on 08/09/2015