Thread: Denying License Plates to Illegals, Too

Denying License Plates to Illegals, Too
By David North
October 2010
Memorandums

David North is a CIS Fellow.




While many states in recent years have made it harder for illegal aliens to get driver’s licenses, too few states examine these documents when issuing license plates for cars. A survey of state motor vehicle agencies showed these practices:

* Only a few states, no more than four, issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, or provide inadequate screening systems.

* A much larger group, 19, hand out driver’s license relatively carefully, but do not demand the document when distributing the plates.

* The largest group of jurisdictions, 23 of them (including Washington, D.C.) deny driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, and require that everyone seeking to register a car must produce that document.

* There are also five states where the rules are not clear; in two of them the issuance of plates is done by county clerks, with the practices varying by county.

Driver’s licenses are routinely used as ID documents in America; I certainly use mine that way scores of times in commercial settings for every time that I actually show it to a police officer.

But if we want to discourage illegal aliens from driving (and generally from living in the United States) we should think about the license plates on cars as well. A rumpled, street-wise friend of mine, once a Virginia criminal defense lawyer, and now in the municipal tax collection business, said to me once: “David, what the illegals really want, in addition to amnesty, is a set of valid license plates for their cars.â€

This is a problem as well in CA. I've always wondered how these illegal invaders are able to get valid tags when they do not have a driver’s license. They may be registering the car in someone else's name that has a valid license. I don't know how they do it, but they have no problems getting tags.

If there's a way to cheat the system, rest assured the invaders have figured it out.

What about the case where someone wants to own a vehicle but doesn't want to drive it? A good example is a handicapped person who can't drive but owns a special vehicle driven by others to get around. Why should an honest American citizen be deprived of owning a vechicle because he can't drive?