DADvocate

I've wondered what "purpose" granting driver's licenses to illegal aliens would serve. Some think it would get illegal immigrants to comply with auto insurance and other laws regarding operating motor vehicles in the U.S.

Do the benefits of “bringing immigrants out of the shadows” and making sure they comply with auto insurance and other regulations outweigh concerns about making it easier for “illegal” immigrants to live and work in the U.S.?

Note how he can't even use the word "illegal" in front of immigrants without putting double quotes around it. But I digress.

According to this "logic" (love those double quotes) people whose very act of entering this country is a criminal act; people of whose identity we cannot be sure; people who can easily disappear across our southern border to avoid prosecution for crimes will somehow become transformed, by having a driver's license, into a law abiding resident with full insurance coverage, etc. I don't think so.

As the saying goes, I may have been born yesterday but it wasn't last night.

My son was rear-ended a couple of weeks ago so hard that it totaled his car. The "legal" citizen with a driver's license who hit him drove off. A witness got the license plate number and the guy was later caught. No insurance. I was hit in a gas starion once. No insurance. Each of my two ex-wives was rear-ended once. No insurance but one guy did pay for the damages.

Yet, somehow, magically, illegal immigrants will attain insurance as required by law. Excuse me, would you like to buy a bridge?

Much more likely the reason our Democratic "friends" support the driver's licenses for illegal immigrants move is votes. That is votes for Democrats cast by illegal immigrants. This becomes easy because of the motor voter bill passed in 1993.

The background here is the National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as "Motor Voter," that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993. It required all states to offer voter registration to anyone getting a driver's license. One simply fills out a form and checks a box stating he is a citizen; he is then registered and in most states does not have to show any ID to vote.

But no one checks if the person registering to vote is indeed a citizen. That greatly concerns New York election officials, who processed 245,000 voter registrations at DMV offices last year. "It would be [tough to catch] if someone wanted to . . . get a number of people registered who aren't citizens and went ahead and got them drivers' licenses," says Lee Daghlian, spokesman for New York's Board of Elections. Assemblywoman Ginny Fields, a Long Island Democrat, warns that the state's "Board of Elections has no voter police" and that the state probably has upwards of 500,000 illegal immigrants old enough to drive.

Indeed, in Tennessee, a legal immigrant have served, illegally, on juries. I doubt she was aware that this was a problem but it clearly points out the difficulty of identifying who can do what. In many states, such as Ohio where I live, people are selected for jury duty according to the address on their driver's license.

I voted today. The only ID I needed to show was my driver's license.

What the Democrats see is a supply of votes. Legality doesn't matter, winning does. Undermining the democratic (ironic use of the word here) process doesn't matter, winning does. Any other damage caused by their actions doesn't matter, winning does. Of course, when your "right", the ends justify the means.

Hat tip to Instapundit.