Unidentified Rolling Objects
Let illegal immigrants get driver's licenses.

by RICHARD MINITER
Monday, September 10, 2001 12:01 A.M. EDT

Law and order tend to ride in tandem. But when law collides with order in a high-speed crash, it's usually law that's at fault.

The Census Bureau estimates that six million to nine million illegal aliens live and work in the U.S. Many of them drive, but only a few have valid driver's licenses or insurance. Crash into one and chances are he'll make a break for it. After all, who wants to be sent back to Costa Rica for an accident on the interstate?

Not all of the nation's estimated 17 million unlicensed motorists are illegal immigrants, of course, but doubtless many are. As a result, auto insurance rates for law-abiding Americans are artificially higher. Insurance companies have learned the hard way that unlicensed, uninsured drivers rarely pay up--so you do.

One in every five fatal car accidents involves a driver without a valid license, according to a recent American Automobile Association study. While there's no reason to believe that illegal aliens are any more reckless behind the wheel than licensed American drivers of the same age, there's no way to know for sure. Without a proper driver's test and eye exam, there's no way to tell. The whole point of a driver's licenses is to ensure a minimum standard of skill and safety among the driving public. But without a Social Security card, even Mario Andretti couldn't get a license to drive in most states.

Some illegals resort to bribery and fraud to get licenses, corrupting motor-vehicle departments across the country. In some cases, criminal license sellers make $4,000 a pop. It's as if they were selling laminated cocaine. California's Department of Motor Vehicles has fired more than 80 employees since 1998 for issuing licenses illegally, according to the Orange County Register. And the Golden State may issue 100,000 licenses per year based on fraud.

The debate over allowing illegal aliens to get driver's licenses has been revving up for more than a decade. But President Bush's friendship with Mexican President Vincente Fox is likely to add more fuel. At a July speech in Chicago, Mr. Fox called on state governments to issue driver's licenses to undocumented workers. "They are hardworking, and they are committed. Committed with this city, with this state and with this great country," Mr. Fox said. "I would very respectfully encourage you to open up for them access to obtaining their driver's license." State legislatures in Illinois, Texas, California and other states are considering the idea.

Sticklers for the law note that illegal aliens are, by definition, criminals; after all, they broke federal immigration laws to get here. Driving without insurance is also illegal in most states. Driving without a valid U.S. license, on the other hand, usually is legal--if the driver has a valid license from his home country.

But defenders of the law should realize that this isn't an effort to change a law simply because it is being openly violated. It is, rather, an effort to realize the goal of law--order--through reform. Mr. Fox is right: Most illegal immigrants are hardworking people who are just trying to get to work. If we let them have licenses we can be relatively confident that they will know how to drive, understand road signs, have a properly inspected vehicle and, most important, buy insurance.

Another angle of the nightstick set is that driver's licenses are the gateway to other privileges of citizenship, like voting and welfare. Just how many illegal grape pickers are standing in line on Election Day? Who knows? But the answer to this problem is to repeal the "motor voter" law, which allows anyone with a license to register to vote. Other immigration foes worry about welfare fraud. "It's like giving illegal aliens the equivalent of an ATM card for all our services," Danielle Elliot of Californians for Population Stabilization, told the Los Angeles Times. But the lack of driver's licenses also prevents illegals from buying insurance, opening bank accounts, cashing checks and doing a myriad of other things that don't cost the taxpayer a dime. Besides, all of this begs the question: Why did the humble driver's license metamorphose into a kind of national identity card?

Still, some suspect that Albany and Cheyenne should send out agents to patrol the border too. We've gone so far down the road with federal oversight of state agencies, unfunded mandates and other encroachments on the solemn prerogatives of states that we've lost sight of the idea that state governments are independent bodies, not adjuncts of the far-flung alphabet soup of the federal bureaucracy. While state governments should cooperate with federal law-enforcement officials, it's simply not their job to enforce immigration laws. Maintaining the safety of the highways and byways in their jurisdiction, however, is their job. "There's a lot of people who feel like illegal immigrants shouldn't be here at all, much less have a driver's license, but . . . highway safety is our No. 1 concern," a spokesman for the North Carolina Motor Vehicles Department told the Associated Press.

North Carolina, along with Utah and Tennessee, has stopped asking driver's-license applicants to present their Social Security cards. It's too soon to know if these states will see a decline in unlicensed drivers or car accidents. But thanks to federalism, we have the opportunity to watch this experiment and find out.

While sheriffs and state police don't usually smile at lawbreakers, they realize maintaining order means protecting the rights of people who may be in the country illegally. Robert Olson, police chief of Minneapolis, made the point at a rally advocating driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. Mr. Olson noted that his officers would protect noncitizens from murder, rape and robbery--without threatening to report them to the feds. "The Minneapolis police department is not the INS. . . . We are not the Federali," he said.

Law exists to maintain order, but the denial of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants is one of those rare cases in which law actually gets in the way of order. We'd get more public order by changing the law than by mindlessly enforcing it.

Mr. Miniter is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe. His column appears Fridays.