MA Joint Committee on Transportation Un-Safe Driving Bill (H 3285)

We need the help of all Patriots in Massachusetts

• This week, a vote will be taken in the MA Joint Committee on Transportation to provide illegal aliens with drivers licenses. AS usual, our MA legislative body believe that if they choose a positive name for a bill, even if it is a horrendously bad bill, that a gullible public will swallow it hook, line and sinker. It’s all in the name of obfuscating the true nature of the proposed legislation, in this case creating an allusion that this bill will increase safety even though it does the exact opposite.  . By all accounts, this Safe Driving Bill is anything but safe and will ultimately lead to greater risks and dangers to all citizens in the Commonwealth. But forget that. From this point forward we will rename the bill appropriately for what it is, namely the Un-Safe Driving Bill (H 3285).

• Granting Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens Poses National Security Risks.

  Granting illegal aliens driver’s licenses makes them invisible to enforcement authorities by giving them the one document they most need to secure employment, transact business and register to vote. This fact is especially disturbing considering that, unlike legal immigrants, illegal aliens are not subject to stringent background checks or face-to-face interviews to determine the existence of any national security threat that they might pose. The 19 September 11 terrorists carried among them over 30 state driver’s licenses and identification cards. These documents allowed them to obtain housing, transportation and other accommodations without raising suspicion while they planned and executed their deadly conspiracy.(1)

• Granting Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens Encourages More Illegal Immigration.

  States who grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens become magnets for illegal immigration. (2) Illegal immigration results in higher costs of living, reduced job availability,(3)lower wages,(4)higher crime rates(5)fiscal hardship on hospitals and substandard quality of care for residents,(6)burdens on public services, increasing their costs and diminishing their availability,(7)and a reduction on the overall quality of life.

• Granting Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens in One State Creates Adverse Consequences in Other States.

  Many states grant recognition of sister states’ driver’s licenses for purposes of granting driver’s licenses to applicants. In other words, an illegal alien could obtain a driver’s license in one state, then potentially take the driver’s license to another state and obtain a driver’s license based on reciprocity.

• Granting Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens Is Fiscally Unwise.

  It is not fair to constituents to continue to increase taxes, cut their benefits and mortgage against their children’s futures while expanding benefits for illegal aliens. States must not invite illegal immigration to their state and place the fiscal burden of providing education, health care and other services to illegal aliens on the backs of taxpayers.

  Legislators should not spend scarce resources by granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens who are subject to immediate deportation. States have a legitimate interest in restricting licenses to those who are citizens or legal residents because of the concern that persons subject to immediate deportation will not be financially responsible for property damage or personal injury due to automobile accidents.

  Many supporters of illegal alien driver’s licenses are under the misguided impression that our country needs illegal workers. That is simply untrue. Over 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. The U.S. is in no “desperate need of the labor” of illegal aliens.

  While the national unemployment rate is currently at 6.3 percent, many states unemployment rates well exceed the national average. For example, the unemployment rate is up to 8.4 percent in Illinois, 7.2 percent in New Jersey, 8.1 percent in California, 8.7 percent in Rhode Island, and as high as 8.5 percent in Nevada.(8) Providing driving privileges to illegal aliens will only encourage illegal aliens to remain in the state and continue to work in the underground economy for lower wages – severely undercutting American workers and yielding little to no tax revenue for the state.

• Granting Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens Rewards Lawbreakers.

  Granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens is a perverse incentive for illegal alien families to move to those states who issue them. Accommodating and rewarding those who violate our immigration laws encourages others to follow the same path and gives prospective immigrants little incentive to pursue the legal paths to immigration when they can side step the process and gain the same benefits.

  Granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens also insults those legal immigrants who patiently waited for months and years for the U.S. State Department and DHS to approve their application for admission or adjustment and paid thousands of dollars in travel, legal and medical fees to abide by the entry, employment, health and processing laws and regulations.(9)

• Granting Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens Conflicts with and Frustrates the Purposes and Objectives of Federal Immigration Law.

  Federal law clearly states under what circumstances a person may legally reside in the United States.(10) An illegal alien, by definition, does not possess lawful presence and is immediately removable. Granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens treats them as if they are lawfully present and facilitates illegal conduct. A driver’s license is one of the most useful single items of identification for creating an appearance of lawful presence. Providing identification and driving privileges to illegal aliens only enables the illegal aliens to continue to live, work, and vote in states unlawfully in contradiction to federal law.

• Granting Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens Will Not Significantly Impact Road Safety or Guarantee More Insured Drivers.

  In 2011, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety released a report that analyzed traffic accident data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System database.(11)The AAA report reveals that from 2007-2009 less than 5 percent of the drivers involved in fatal car accidents nationwide were unlicensed drivers.(12)

So please call the following legislators and tell them that this bill is
dangerous to personal safety and National Security and they must kill it in
Committee!

Joint Committee on Transportation (MA)
Re: Un-Safe Driving Bill (H 3285)
Senate Chair – Thomas M. McGee, Senator
D-Lynn, Phone: 617-722-1350

Senate Vice Chair – Thomas P. Kennedy, Senator
D-Brockton, Phone: 617-722-1200

House Chair – William M. Straus, Representative
D-Mattapoisett, Phone: 617-722-2400

House Vice Chair – John J. Mahoney, Representative
D-Worcester, Phone: 617-722-2400

Senate Members

Gale D. Candaras (D-Wilbraham) Phone: 617-722-1291
Robert L. Hedlund (R-Weymouth) Assistant Minority Leader Phone: 617-722-1646
Michael O. Moore (D-Millbury) Phone: 617-722-1485
Marc R. Pacheco (D-Taunton) Phone: 617-722-1551
Michael F. Rush (D-West Roxbury) Phone: 617-722-1348

House Members

Gailanne M. Cariddi (D-North Adams) Phone: 617-722-2450
Mark J. Cusack (D-Braintree) Phone: 617-722-2637
Peter J. Durant (R-Spencer) Phone: 617-722-2060
John V. Fernandes (D-Milford) Phone: 617-722-2220
Michael J. Finn (D-West Springfield) Phone: 617-722-2637
Danielle W. Gregoire (D-Marlborough) Phone: 617-722-2460
Steven S. Howitt (R-Seekonk) Phone: 617-722-2305
Timothy R. Madden (D-Nantucket) Phone: 617-722-2810
Christopher M. Markey (D-Dartmouth) Phone: 617-722-2396
Jerald A. Parisella (D-Beverly) Phone: 617-722-2877
Chris Walsh (D-Framingham) Phone: 617-722-2013

Additional Un-Safe Driving Bill (H 3285): Talking Points

1. This bill has nothing to do with safe driving. Its singular goal is to make it more convenient for illegal aliens to live in our state, and for unscrupulous employers to hire them instead of Americans and legal immigrants.
2. We should be discouraging illegal immigration, not encouraging it by issuing ID cards that make it easier for them to claim social services they are not entitled to … jobs, board airplanes, enter federal buildings, conceal their true identity, and even vote.
3. The Registry cannot possibly determine if illegal aliens are who they say they are, because many of them lack proper identification. Relying only on easily-faked documents – leases and utility bills – will introduce too much fraud into the ID system.
4. Massachusetts will become a magnet for fraud and illegal aliens from all over the country to get licenses. This will cause our licenses to be devalued in other states and by the federal government.
5. Issuing licenses to illegal aliens does not necessarily reduce the number of uninsured drivers. In New Mexico, they found that issuing DLs to illegal aliens did not reduce the number who drove without insurance, even though that was a key goal of the program.
6. Issuing licenses to illegal aliens has not been shown to reduce accidents, drunk driving, or other unsafe driving behaviors. Studies in California and New Mexico fail to show any improvement in safe driving as a result of issuing licenses to illegal aliens.
7. Legislators should instead work to reduce illegal immigration by encouraging enforcement of unlicensed driver laws, implementing mandatory E-Verify, and working with ICE to increase the number of deportations, especially of criminals and reckless illegal alien drivers.
8. Legislators should also demand that the governor stop allowing unlicensed drivers to register vehicles and get license plates for their cars, according to the law they passed with bipartisan agreement in 2012.

(1) “More than half of the 48 Islamic radicals convicted or tied to recent terrorist plots in the United States over the past decade either were themselves illegal aliens or relied on illegals to get fake IDs. Immigration violators participated in the first attack on the World Trade Center, the Los Angeles Millennium bombing plot, and the New York subway bombing conspiracy. Three of the 9/11 hijackers were here illegally; two had previous immigration violations. Three 9/11 hijackers—Mohammed Atta, Hani Hanjour, and Ziad Jarrah—came into contact with state and local police before the attacks for speeding. Atta and Hanjour were visa violators.” Testimony of Michelle Malkin before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship (May

(2) Data obtained by the Associated Press from the three states who issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens reveals that the states saw a surge in illegal aliens seeking driver’s licenses and IDs after Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 was signed into law. See Tim Korte and Manuel Valdes, More immigrants getting driver’s licenses in Washington, August 13, 2010, available at http://o.seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012619222_licenses14.html. Specifically, during the ten weeks after Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 became law, the number of licenses issued to foreign nationals in the three states that currently grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens rose by 60 percent over the annual average for the previous year. Id. In Washington State, the FBI was tipped that people from across the country were coming to the State because of its license law. Id. Indeed, Washington experienced a surge in driver’s license applications from out-of-state illegal aliens after amending its law to allow illegal alien driver’s licenses. See Stephen Clark, States Revise Rules on Driver’s Licenses for Illegal Immigrants as National ID Approaches, FOXNEWS, February 17, 2011, available at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/17/states-revise-rules-drivers-licenses-illegal-immigrants-national-id-approaches/. In 2003, New Mexico amended its driver’s license statute to allow foreign nationals to obtain driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status. See N.M. Stat. Ann. § 66-5-9 (2012). Currently, 71,729 foreign nationals possess a New Mexico driver’s license. Since July of 2010, anyone applying for the state’s foreign national driver’s license must make an appointment with the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division (MVD). MVD offices review applications and grant a temporary driver’s license to persons who meet the documentary requirements. The application is then passed on to the New Mexico Taxation & Revenue Department’s Tax Fraud Investigations Division (TRD-TFID), who oversees the MVD. Between August 2010 and  April 2011, TRD-TFID investigators found that 37 percent of the 16,000 foreign national requests for appointments came from out-of-state, most from Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. See Tim Maestas, Immigrant license fraud increases, KASA FOX, May 16, 2011, available at http://www.kasa.com/dpps/news/news_other_4/immigrant-license-fraud-increases_3813419. Investigators found one New Mexico number was used 228 times, a phone number with an Arizona area code was used 24 times, and one address in Albuquerque was used more than 70 times in the application process. Id.

Conversely, States that refuse benefits or privileges to illegal aliens see a dramatic decrease in illegal immigration. For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) estimated that Arizona’s illegal alien population grew from 330,000 in 2000 to 560,000 by 2008, one of the fastest rates nationally. See Office of Immigration Statistics, DHS, Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2008, available at http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2008.pdf. After Arizona’s SB 1070 strict immigration law passed, however, Arizona’s illegal alien population dropped by 18 percent from 2008 to 2009. See Office of Immigration Statistics, DHS, Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2009, available at http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2009.pdf. See also, e.g., Prince William County (“PWC”), Virginia. After PWC instituted a policy of cooperation with DHS, its illegal alien population decreased significantly in just two years, resulting in a reduction in violent crime and hit-and-run accidents. See Center for Survey Research, University of Virginia, Evaluation Study of Prince William County’s Illegal Immigration Enforcement Policy FINAL REPORT 2010, available at http://www.pwcgov.org/government/bocs/Documents/13188.pdf.

(3)There is no such thing as an “illegal alien job.” Illegal aliens and natives compete for the same jobs, and native workers are increasingly disadvantaged because employers have access to a steady supply of low-wage foreign workers. Less than 1 percent of the Census Bureau’s 465 civilian job categories have a majority immigrant workforce. See Steven A. Camarota, Immigration’s Impact on U.S. Workers, Testimony Prepared for the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, November 19, 2009, Center for Immigration Studies, November 2009, available at http://www.cis.org/node/1582. Illegal immigration has a disproportional impact on poor Americans. Because a large proportion of illegal aliens are low-skilled workers, they are more likely to compete with and undercut the wages of low-skill native workers. See Jeffrey S Passel and D’Vera Cohn, A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States, Pew Research Center, April 2009, at 11-12, available at http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/107.pdf.

(4) In Georgia, where the illegal alien share of the labor force went from about 4 percent to 7 percent from 2000 to 2007, a study by the Federal Reserve found that the illegal labor caused a 2.5 percent wage drop overall and a 11 percent drop in construction wages over that time period. See Julie L. Hotchkiss and Myriam Quispe-Agnoli, The Labor Market Experience and Impact of Undocumented Workers, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, February 2008, at 36, 39, available at http://www.frbatlanta.org/filelegacydocs/wp0807c.pdf. Harvard University’s George Borjas concluded that immigration reduced wages for the poorest 10 percent of Americans by about 7.4 percent between 1980 and 2000 with even larger effects for workers with less than 20 years of experience. George J. Borjas, Increasing the Supply of Labor through Immigration: Measuring the Impact on Native Workers, Backgrounder,Center for Immigration Studies, May 2004, at 1, available at http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back504.pdf.

(5) The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that, although illegal aliens only make up an estimated 3.7 percent of the United States population, non-citizens account for 26 percent of the federal jail population. See United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, State of the Bureau at 3 (2010), available at http://www.bop.gov/news/PDFs/sob10.pdf. DHS estimates that non-citizens nationally comprise 20 percent of inmates in prisons and jails. See Center for Immigration Studies, Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue at 1 (November 2009), available at http://www.cis.org/articles/2009/crime.pdf. Even so, every crime illegal aliens commit in the United States was potentially preventable if the illegal alien had been identified, apprehended, and removed before they victimized anyone. States who give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens create safe havens that facilitate criminal activity, especially in regard to drug- and gang- related crimes, human trafficking, and identity theft.

(6) The national annual state and local costs related to health care for Illegal aliens is $5.8 billion. See FAIR, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (2010), available at http://www.fairus.org/publications/the-fiscal-burden-of-illegal-immigration-on-u-s-taxpayers.

(7) Illegal immigration costs United States taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state and local level. See FAIR, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (2010), available at http://www.fairus.org/publications/the-fiscal-burden-of-illegal-immigration-on-u-s-taxpayers. The bulk of the costs — some $84 billion — are absorbed by state and local governments. Id.

(8) Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistic: Unemployment Rates for States, November 20, 2012, available at http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm.

(9) See Michelle Malkin, Amnesty Gang Throws Law-Abiders Under the Bus, TOWNHALL, January 30, 2013, available at http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/01/30/amnesty-gang-throws-lawabiders-under-the-bus-n1500802/page/full/ (“President Obama and the bipartisan Gang of Eight in Washington who want to create a ‘pathway to citizenship’ for millions of illegal aliens have sent a message loud and clear to those who follow the rules: You’re chumps! Have you patiently waited for months and years for the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to slog through your application? You’re chumps! Have you paid thousands of dollars in travel, legal and medical fees to abide by the thicket of entry, employment, health and processing regulations? You’re chumps! Have you studied for your naturalization test, taken the oath of allegiance to heart, embraced our time-tested principle of the rule of law, and demonstrated that you will be a financially independent, productive citizen? You’re chumps!”).

(10) See the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101, et seq.

(11) AAA FOUNDATION FOR TRAFFIC SAFETY, Unlicensed to Kill, November 2011, available at https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/2011Unlicensed2Kill.pdf. 

(12)  Id. at 5, 6. The 5 percent figure includes not only illegal aliens, but