Funny how the lowly driver´s license lies at the core of the immigration debate in the United States.
For the illegal immigrant, a car represents freedom – freedom to drive to and from work, freedom to go shopping to cheaper stores and freedom to transport you or your relatives wherever you please. To a large extent, it represents the ability to go about your life in a more-or-less normal fashion. As normal, that is, as can be expected when you run a daily risk of easily happening into a place or situation that can lead to your deportation.
Take the option of a license away and you nudge illegal immigrants in the direction of becoming illegal drivers and place them at risk of deportation after being stopped for running a red light. Call it the Irving Approach.
Denying driver´s licenses to illegal immigrant is an effective way of ratcheting up the daily pressure against them. And for those who want to see the U.S. rid of every single illegal immigrant regardless of cost and consequence – well, that´s just fine. It also opens the door to police departments pulling over drivers for DWL – Driving While Latino.
There clearly is widespread public opposition to granting illegal immigrants a driver´s license. Forty-one states ban the option. So, it is not surprising that Governor Spitzer´s measure to allow people to secure a license by presenting a foreign passport has proven controversial. But, the extent of the controversy lends itself to some rather far-fetched scenarios.
[New York State Senator] Leibell suggested that under the policy, even “Osama Bin Laden could get a license.”
[New York Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner David] Swarts quipped the state would catch that application before it was processed, adding that, “as a columnist said, at least we’d know where he was.”
