One Million Illegal Foreigners Get Driver’s License In California

Advisor April 9, 2018

Over 1 million illegal foreigners residing in the city of California have collected their licenses for driving, according to recent information and Department of Motor Vehicles in the state which made the announcement on Wednesday.

The Department of Motor Vehicles operating at the state level declared that by the 31st of March, 2018, around 1,001,050 illegal foreigners have collected their official licenses for driving.

This means that illegitimate foreigners have enjoyed the privilege of getting their licenses legally in California state, which has been effective since 1st of January, 2015, not long after the Californian governor and a Democratic, Jerry Brown, appended his signature on the Assembly Bill 60 known as the act of safety and responsibility and it has become law ever since.

The immigrants can now drive around the city without the fear of harassment from law-enforcement agents

Putting a Smile on Their Faces

DriveCA explained that the purpose of the law was to assist unlawful immigrants to have something doing as a source of livelihood, take their kids to their schools by car, and perform their daily duties with no worry of whether they will be asked to stop for a search.

Luis Alejo is the creator of this particular bill which was written in 2013 and a former Democratic member of the assembly. Alejo said that the parliament is doing what it’s supposed to be doing and how it ought to have done, and has empowered the status of more than million foreigners and their loved ones. He went further to say that foreigners are being screened, being licensed, and getting insured. That process is keeping the roads more secure for everybody, says Alejo.

American capital, Washington D.C, was among the states that permit illegal foreigners to apply for licenses

These driver’s licenses are made in such a way that they possess conspicuously exceptional features and the owners cannot use them for specific purposes under the federal laws. For example, having the chance to go to federal-owned territories which are marked ‘restricted’ and the licenses are not automatic freedom for them to participate in the voting process.

There are other states apart from California which also grant a permit for illegal foreigners to own licenses for driving under the law. These states, eleven in total, include; Colorado, Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, New Mexico, Washington, Nevada, Delaware, Washington D.C, and Connecticut.

However, these states only accept applications for driver’s licenses from illegal foreigners if only they have required credentials like a birth certificate obtained outside the US, an international passport, or a card issued by a consular and proof of their present occupancy in California.

Good Intentions

No illegal immigrant is permitted to use the license for other purposes.

Other requirements include passing written and driving tests; going for thumbprints, then providing evidence of their insurance. The license also has words which say that the license is limited to driving only, no other privileges are allowed.

The process has been on since 2014 when the government of California made this particular law which stirred controversies, and the first organization to respond to the kind gesture towards illegal foreigners then was DMV, whose centers all over California were bombarded with those immigrants who wanted to seize the chance to obtain the license.

This law grants permission to these travelers to go anywhere with their own cars without molestation by the authorities, says the director of SIREN, an organization that was in charge of advocacy for immigration, Maricela Gutierrez.

At that time, Gutierrez added that a lot of these illegal foreigners had the pleasure of taking their children to their schools and do other things with ease, contrary to what they went through in the past where they could only take public buses which was a struggle for them because getting a bus from one point to another could cost them the wait of 3 hours or more.

However, when Trump was still contesting as a presidential aspirant, he promised to give hard times to illegal immigrants as soon as he’s elected. That brought unrest to the hearts of immigrants who’d already collected legal licenses. Many were afraid of deportation if agencies in control of national immigration get their DMV personal data, although the state authorities assured them that such would not be their fate.

Another advantage of the law is that it would calm the worry over deportation which was always a stumbling block for illegal foreigners to get screened and authorized to use a car. That caused some discomfort in the state where approximately 3 million of such people live at that time.