Misconceptions cause unfounded fear of illegal immigrants among U.S. citizens
Javier Puerto opinions@kykernel.com.
Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: Opinions

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In the ongoing local and national discussion on whether illegal immigrants should be issued driver's licenses, I would like to address several issues regarding illegal immigration.

First, I often hear people say "illegal immigrants have no rights." That is a misconception at best and an intentionally biased opinion at worst. The truth is, illegal immigrants also have rights that are protected by the law.

In the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court established that "whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a 'person' in any ordinary sense of that term. Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as 'persons' guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."

People who are against issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants argue that it does not make our roads safer. The argument that illegal immigrants are "the same drivers as the day before they were granted a license," as Carl Ross wrote in his letter to the editor in Tuesday's Kernel, lacks any notion of logic.

To obtain a driver's license, an individual must pass the written test, vision test and road test so that they can be certified as a valid driver. Issuing illegal immigrants licenses doesn't mean lowering the standard requirements for them. Instead, they have to practice and become competent drivers before they are issued a driver's license.

Driver's licenses are often used in the United States for identification purposes, but they do not give illegal immigrants rights to which they are not entitled, as some people assume falsely. Such photo IDs are not used in the U.S. in order to grant rights but to ensure that an individual's civil identity corresponds with only one physical person.

I am a legal alien who has a valid driver's license in spite of not being an American citizen. I am also aware that under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the executive branch has the power to detain indefinitely legal aliens like myself on U.S. soil without a writ of habeas corpus. My having a driver's license does not grant me any right to revise my status and demand from a court that I be treated as a citizen in the event that I am put in prison indefinitely. The same applies to other rights that I lack, such as the right to vote.

I often hear the argument that illegal immigrants steal hardworking American taxpayers' money since these immigrants benefit from social services. If one looks into this issue in depth, they will find that facts tell a whole different story.

For starters, as a legal alien, my tax contribution is no different from that of a citizen, and I do not feel robbed when a poor immigrant or an American citizen without health insurance (there were 46 million people in this country without health insurance in 2004) uses my tax dollars to receive assistance in critical situations.

"About three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes," said Stephen Goss, social security chief actuary, in a 2005 article in The New York Times. Furthermore, the Social Security Administration reported in 2003 that illegal immigrants add an estimated $7 billion each year to Social Security and Medicare, the article reported.

A small group of people still holds the opinion that illegal immigrants in this country should be identified and deported. Never mind the potentially disastrous consequences if this plan were carried out, just the cost of such an operation makes it impractical. A 2005 National Policy Institute report estimated that it would cost $206 billion over five years to deport all 10 million-plus illegal immigrants in the U.S. In comparison, the budget for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal 2006 was $40.3 billion. Feasible option? I think not.

Despite what some people believe, opinions about illegal immigration in this country are rather diverse and complex.

A May 2007 poll by CBS found that 69 percent of American adults believe illegal immigrants should "be prosecuted and deported for being in the U.S. illegally," although 62 percent also said that aliens who have been in the United States at least two years should be "given a chance to keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status."

People do, indeed, lack familiarity with the economic reality of illegal immigration in the United States. This state of confusion is reflected on poll results, which vary depending on how the issue is approached and who the respondents are.

It is evident that the more people educate themselves about immigration and its related economic issues, the more they realize how complex the problem is and how much more scrupulous our discussion of it should become.

Javier Puerto is a part-time instructor in the UK Hispanic Studies Department. E-mail