A group of state House Republicans aren’t with their proposal for PennDOT to periodically check the immigration status of legal immigrants who have holding Pennsylvania driver’s licenses and photo identification cards.

Good luck convincing Gov. Josh Shapiro and House Democrats of that. The federal government needs to do a better job of making sure its records are up to date. Good luck convincing President Donald Trump and U.S. House Republicans of that fact.

It’s a microcosm of why we find ourselves mired in this depressing state of affairs in our politics.

We should all be able to agree there are certain standards immigrants need to meet to prevent situations like that of an Uzbekistan native accused of recruiting on behalf of a jihadist organization before making his way to the U.S., receiving a CDL from the state of Pennsylvania and then being arrested in Kansas in late November. The federal crackdown on immigrant driver’s licenses came after a tractor-trailer driver not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. California and Pennsylvania were among states that received a letter from the federal government Nov. 20 threatening to withhold $75 million in funding if Pennsylvania does not immediately revoke what the administration claims are illegally issued commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants.

States need to be more careful to whom they are giving driver’s licenses, especially for tractor-trailers.

But the license wouldn’t have been granted in the first place had the Department of Homeland Security been maintaining a federal database that has the information states need to grant the driver’s licenses in the first place. Both the state and federal governments can, and should, do more to keep our roads safe. For its part, Shapiro’s administration ceased issuing commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration published a regulation in late September that would severely limit which immigrants can get one, according to the AP.

But the state should implement House Rep. Timothy O’Neal’s legislation requiring PennDOT to periodically check the immigration status of those to whom it gives driver’s licenses or REAL IDs. Current state law would allow such a review only when a driver’s license is renewed, which in the case of Bozorov would have been 2029.

That’s simply not good enough. The federal government needs to do a better job updating information n the DHS database – and then Pennsylvania needs to make use of that information.