Should illegal immigrants be granted driver’s licenses?
A hotly-contested issue in the recent US immigration debate has been whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to procure driver's licenses. According to estimates, there are up to 10 million undocumented, working immigrants, and opinion polls have generally shown strong public resistance to granting them driver's licenses. But, since driver's licenses are a state-given privilege, the situation varies across the country.
Michelle Nativiste
Eli Pitser
Illegal immigrants should be able to get a driver's license. At least it confirms they know how to drive safely on shared roads, and it begins a paper trail so they don’t remain undocumented.
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Michelle Nativiste
Thank you for sharing your views on this topic with me, because I think it’s an important one for our country.
Our country is overrun with illegal immigrants (an estimated 11 million), who pose an economic threat to our nation’s livelihood. Unchecked, immigrants would stream in by the millions, depressing wages for working-class people and undermining the promise of the American dream for blue-collar workers. It would also seriously deteriorate our historical capacity to assimilate people, creating a (primarily) Spanish-speaking subculture that would challenge the linguistic and cultural bonds that bind us together.
The law makes a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, with the former enjoying a number of legal privileges that make legal residency worthwhile. Illegal immigrants, on the other hand, might have trouble with work, housing, communication, transportation and money without any form of legal documentation. This might an incentive for most of them to leave our country voluntarily.
Giving illegal immigrants a driver’s license, which has become this country’s de facto personal identification, would give them far easier access to jobs, apartment rentals, phone, banking and credit card accounts, as well as the ability to drive and fly via plane. Why on earth would they want to leave?
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Eli Pitser
Thank you for inviting me, Michelle, to debate you on this topics. I have strong feelings on this matter as well, and look forward to sharing them with you.
Our country has a long history of immigration, both legal and illegal. Our government has tried to deal with illegal immigration decade after decade, unsuccessfully, only to see the granting of mass amnesties time and time again. This is a purely practical, realistic view of illegal immigration—it will never go away, so you must learn how to adapt to it as best as possible.
I agree with you that having a driver’s license makes life easier, and would probably reduce the number of illegal immigrants who head back home on their own. But on the other side of the coin, please remember that this might be one of the best ways to establish a paper trail for people who would otherwise be completely undocumented.
The fact that the 11 million figure is considered a very rough estimate is because we simply do not know much about who’s here illegally! Without any form of legitimate US documentation, they use forged/fake documents and we don’t know much about them at all. We don’t know what they’re spending money on, where they’re traveling, where they live, where they work, or who they’re talking to. This has profound security implications, not just in the age of terrorism, but in the case of simply tracking down the minority of criminals and other troublemakers that any population will have.
Aren’t you at all worried about the implications of not having any sort of documentation of illegals in our country?
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Michelle Nativiste
I am worried, Eli. However, the solution is not to confer them legal status with a driver’s license!
I agree that our country’s history is full of examples of ineptness at dealing with the problem of illegal immigration. But because we haven’t been able to deal with illegal immigration until now doesn’t mean there isn’t a workable solution. And I can guarantee you, giving illegals a driver’s license is certainly not part of that solution!
As I said before, having a driver’s license gives a person a lot of legitimacy with which to lead a normal life in our country. Meanwhile, people who are lawfully trying to get into this country are often tied up for months or even years in their home countries, just because they chose to play by the rules. It’s an insult to do nothing to our legally-immigrating aspirants to ignore the illegals; it’s a smack in the face to give illegals the right to live the sort of life that makes people want to immigrate into the US in the first place.
Are you not at all concerned about what kind of message we’re giving potential legal immigrants, Eli?
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Eli Pitser
Yes, but aren’t illegal immigrants people, too? Very few people come to the US to live on welfare; our welfare system is not a very generous one (Europe, Canada and more socialist countries are better destinations). People come to the US, legally or illegally, to work. The vast majority of illegal immigrants are productive members of our economy, often doing the sorts of work that are impossible to fill with native-born people. And the vast majority would be more than happy to pay taxes and comply with all of our rules if they were able to function fully and be granted some sort of status that wouldn’t threaten them with deportation at any given moment.
And please keep in mind that in most places in this country, a car is the only realistic form of transportation available to a person who does want to work and carry out the functions of his/her life. Do you want an illegal immigrant to drive to work, or take their kids to school without meeting the standards set forth by the DMV? No insurance, no driver’s test, possibly little comprehension of our country’s road rules and signs? It’s a bit of a cop-out to say they shouldn’t be driving anyway, because they are. And, unfortunately, a few will run afoul of the law and cause great harm.
A driver’s license does two things:
1) establishes that a person knows the minimum necessary to drive safely in the U.S.
2) establishes a paper trail that other governmental agencies can use in case a problem comes up.
What the driver’s license does not do, and should not do, is function as an immigration status document. If there is work to be done to improve our immigration policy in this country, then the driver’s license is the wrong thing to focus on.
Michelle, here’s a scenario. Imagine two illegal immigrants, Hilda and Miguel, that came to this country 10 years ago and now have 2 children with US citizenship (by virtue of the fact that they were born here). They are physically able-bodied and want to work. They want to provide for their children. The only job they can find is far away from the only residence they can afford, beyond the reach of city buses and car pools. The employer, Bill’s coffee shop, has been trying to fill a couple of positions for months, without any luck. He might go under and have to let his current staff go if he doesn’t get the help his business desperately needs.
Would you want these two to drive legally to work and register to work as Hilda and Miguel? Or have them driving illegally and registering to work as untraceable “Maria” and “Jose” with fake papers? Or just have Bill and his current employees out of work? (The latter two scenarios are very real possibilities)
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Michelle Nativiste
I think you’ve set up a straw man argument, Eli. You’ve avoided the real issue of immigration reform, and the set of laws and their enforcement that would be necessary for it to work, and have instead relied on an assumption that immigration reform is impossible. In your scenario with Hilda, Miguel, Bill and his employees, you’ve ignored the plight of Rosa and Alberto, who have been waiting for years in El Salvador to immigrate to the US, and who would happily work for Bill (a scenario that’s just as likely as yours)
This exchange has been an interesting one, and I thank you for participating in it with me. I would like to leave a couple of final thoughts and would be interested to read your responses to them:
1. We are at a crossroads in this country with respect to immigration reform. How would giving illegal immigrants legal driver’s licenses square away with a comprehensive plan for dealing with immigration?
2. Given that the 9/11 terrorists had legal driver’s licenses and thus had access to organize and plan their attacks, don’t you think giving immigrants whom our government has not vetted the same access is downright dangerous?
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Eli Pitser
I have not ignored the fact that immigration reform is a good idea. But dealing with reality today should not be predicated on the hope of a solution tomorrow. I’m interested in solving the problems of safety, security and employment today.
These are my answers to your questions:
1. If immigration reform comes that comprehensively deals with illegal immigrants, then laws granting illegal immigrants driver’s licenses can be consigned to the history books.
2. The problem with terrorists is not that they had driver’s licenses, but that they were allowed into the country and not monitored during their stay. The fault lies with the INS (or DHS today) and poor information sharing between government agencies.
Thank you, Michelle, for giving me the opportunity to debate this with you. We’ll just have to agree to disagree. But it’s great that we’re discussing this because the eventual solution will be achieved only if we are able to communicate and listen past our own opinions.
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