Road to hypocrisy
Giving illegal aliens driver's licenses won't solve larger immigration issue


http://www.suntimes.com
November 27, 2007

Granting driver's licenses for illegal immigrants is impractical, nonsensical and further clouds the intensifying debate polarizing our country. While Homeland Security is building a fence along our southern border and Immigration and Customs Enforcement is stepping up its enforcement, deporting 221,000 this year, how can we have states issuing driver's licenses to people who aren't supposed to be here in the first place?

That would mean one arm of the government is spending millions tracking down illegal aliens and deporting them while another is cataloging and legitimizing them. It's hypocritical and antithetical. We can't have it both ways. If we're going to encourage those who broke a federal law by giving them driving privileges, we'll be taking a step backward.

But several states, including New York, have considered giving driver's licenses to people who are here illegally. Eight states, including nearby Michigan, don't require drivers to prove their legal status when they get licenses. Supporters of the controversial measure here in Illinois, including former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, say our roads would be safer if illegal immigrants passed driver's tests and bought car insurance. If just half of the estimated 250,000 unlicensed immigrant motorists in the state took out car insurance, resident drivers would save more than $59 a year on each policy, according to the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. That savings would rise, the coalition says, to $88 on each policy if 75 percent of illegal immigrants in the state had insurance. But there's no guarantee that people who are here illegally would take a driver's test and then take out insurance. And even more unbelievable is that insurance companies would pass on those savings to us residents. Right.

About 16 percent of Illinois drivers don't bother obtaining car insurance, even though it's mandated, according to the Insurance Research Council. Most are American born and legal citizens. What would motivate illegal immigrants to get coverage if American-born drivers don't? Even if they did sign up for insurance and were involved in an accident, what would motivate them to stick around and exchange information?

But the real question is why would anyone who is here illegally trust the government with their personal information? Homeland Security could declare data concerning illegals a matter of national security and seize them. If the average citizen is wary of the government, the average illegal immigrant might be petrified.

The whole driver's license debate mushroomed out of control after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed and then recently scrapped a three-tiered plan that would have allowed undocumented immigrants ID licenses to help bring them "out of the shadows."

Hillary Clinton was so flustered by the matter, she didn't know what to tell the American public, and waffled her stance several times.

Our Sen. Barack Obama put it the best. "The problem we have here is not driver's licenses. Undocumented workers do not come here to drive. ... That's not the reason they're here," he said in a recent debate. "They're here to work. And so instead of being distracted by what has now become a wedge issue, let's focus on actually solving the problem. . . ."

Suspend the driver's license debate and speed up solving the larger immigration problem. Pronto.