SACRAMENTO -- Drivers' license applicants from among California's estimated 2 million illegal immigrant adults would have to undergo fingerprinting, background checks and other security measures to ease concerns of opponents including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, under a new legislative proposal Wednesday.

The latest proposal by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles -- the fourth in two years -- is once again triggering a clash with popular opinion in California. Schwarzenegger capitalized on public opposition last fall, campaigning against licensing illegal immigrant drivers and quickly persuading lawmakers to repeal a new law allowing the practice.

The latest attempt would have to pass the Legislature before Aug. 31 and be signed by Schwarzenegger by Sept. 30 to become law. It would require illegal immigrants to pay $146 for licenses, thereby financing the costs of state and federal background checks and a new system of citizenship classes that recipients would have to attend before having their licenses renewed.

Immigrants would be able to get their drivers' licenses by showing a federal taxpayer identification card or identification cards from their consulates. The bill does not apply to commercial licenses.

But a Schwarzenegger spokesman said Wednesday the newest proposal still falls short, and suggested the senator "may have to show a little more patience politically." Schwarzenegger promised late last year to work with Cedillo on a new approach, saying he approved of providing licenses to immigrants "the right way."

The newest legislation comes just months after legal licenses for illegal immigrant drivers became a leading issue in the recall campaign against former Gov. Gray Davis.

Davis refused to sign the bill in 2001 and 2002 over security and terrorism concerns, but then signed a drivers license bill in 2003, triggering political accusations that he was pandering to the state's Hispanic voters.

Nationally, 40 states and the District of Columbia require drivers to prove their legal residency before getting licenses, according to the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center. Most of California's neighbors, including Oregon, Washington, Utah and Hawaii, don't have the requirement.

California began demanding proof of legal residency for drivers' licenses in 1994.

Cedillo, flanked by Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh, another Los Angeles Democrat who heads the Legislature's 24-member Latino Caucus, called his new bill a six-month product of focus groups, town hall meetings and polling that "would resolve the issue once and for all."

Backers say drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants will make the state's highways and streets safer as applicants take drivers' tests and become insured. Bratton said Los Angeles has a "very significant problem with hit and run" accidents where unlicensed drivers flee the scene.

But opponents call licenses a reward for people living illegally in California and maintain terrorists could use a license law to blend into the state.

Bratton called the terrorist arguments unwarranted.

"The idea that we seem to be pushing this thing back because of concerns about terrorism more than anything else, I just don't see it," he said. Under the bill, residents of nations considered by the U.S. Department of State to be state sponsors of international terrorism - including Cuba, Libya and North Korea -- would not be eligible for drivers' licenses.

Bratton also differed with the Schwarzenegger administration over requiring that licenses indicate the holder is not a legal resident of California.

"I think that's very inappropriate," he said. "It harkens back to the era when Jews were required to wear yellow armbands. It harkens back to Puritan times in my home state when we branded people with scarlet letters."

Stutzman called the chief's comparisons "absurd and hyperbole. We're talking about granting licenses to undocumented aliens," he said.