NO LICENSES FOR ILLEGALS
For its size, New York gets a disproportionately low number of illegal aliens.
Mostly that's because illegal aliens go where they can get jobs, and thanks to suffocating taxes and regulations, there's no work in New York.
Sure, the farmers are doing all they can to bring in illegals – it's a lot easier to pay aliens under the table than it is to offer citizens market wages – but still the majority of New York lags behind much of the country when it comes to the social rot resulting from illegal immigration.
Fortunately, the governor is trying to change that.
On Friday, he said that illegals can now get drivers licenses.
Just walk up, pass the test, show any kind of document from anywhere, and you've got a bona fide New York State drivers license.
That makes New York the first large state to give illegals licenses. That makes New York a magnet for illegal aliens.
Which is only fitting.
After 40 years of being a welfare magnet – offering higher benefits and more entitlements and drawing untold numbers of out-of-state hogs to the New York trough – the Empire State has finally decided that, when it comes to welcoming illegal aliens, it will take a back seat to no one.
The governor says this will make our roads safer.
Experience in the tiny handful of other states that have made this mistake shows no such increase in safety for the motoring public.
See, people whose first act in your country is breaking the law, tend to have a pretty low view of all law. If you decide the immigration law doesn't apply to you, it's pretty easy to decide that the traffic law doesn't apply to you, either.
Which is one of the nationwide plagues resulting from illegal immigration. The scenario of an illegal – usually drunk – driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle, getting in a wreck in which somebody else gets bunged up or killed, and then fleeing the scene of the accident and sometimes the country, has become completely common.
When you ignore one aspect of the law, and tell people they don't have to obey it, you invite them to scoff at all your law – including the vehicle law that protects your family's life.
The governor says that giving licenses to illegals will cause them to obey traffic law. What a crock. Licenses cost money. Illegals know they can drive without them and likely won't get caught. They're not going to get a license just to be nice.
Ditto for vehicle registration, vehicles taxes and insurance.
For the governor's pipe dream to come true, the average illegal alien would have to decide that he now wants to dramatically increase the cost of driving for himself.
And that simply is not going to happen.
But illegals will snap up drivers licenses. They won't engage any other aspect of the highway law, but they will get drivers licenses. In fact, if experience in other states is an indicator, a great many illegals will get licenses. If past experience is any teacher, illegals will come to New York just for the license, and many will do so fraudulently.
Why?
Because a drivers license is the official ID in America. And with one you can do about anything. An innocent example of that is banking. With a drivers license most of the banking system opens up to illegals.
A not-so-innocent example is airlines.
What does it take to get on an airliner in America?
A drivers license.
What stops illegal aliens from flying on most planes in America right now? Usually, it's the lack of proper ID.
With a New York drivers license, the commercial air travel industry is laid bare for illegal aliens.
Who I guess we're really supposed to hope are just illegal aliens.
It seems odd to me that a state that had two jetliners fly into its buildings would open the door for some 12 to 20 million law breakers to walk right onto commercial jets.
What is to stop some jihad boy from flying to Mexico from whatever corner of the stanky Middle East he calls home and then walking across the river and making his way to New York to get a drivers license so he can get himself an airline seat? If terrorist infiltrators among the illegal alien population are present in a million-to-one ratio, that means they've got more than enough in our country to pull off another September 11.
Further, there is just the plain-old common sense reaction. Namely: You don't give illegal aliens legal benefits.
If a class of people say the law does not apply to them when it restricts them, they cannot with integrity later say that it does apply to them when it benefits them. Illegal aliens should not get legal benefits.
When you reward people for doing wrong, you invite chaos.
New York should not accommodate and reward illegal aliens and their employers. Yes, their employers. Now they can get licenses and drive employer vehicles without incurring extra liability to their boss.
The governor is wrong.
Illegal aliens should not have drivers licenses, from New York or any state.
And if the governor cared about the state and its interest, he would announce that the state police were launching a crackdown and would track down and turn over to the feds all the illegal aliens they could find.
But that's not happening.
We're being invaded, and the governor is holding the door open to make it easier.
Illegal aliens should not have drivers licenses, from New York or any other state.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2007
