Bottom Of The Barrel

Green card not drivers licenses

One of the hot issues in our Gubernatorial race is that of illegal immigrants and how the state government should handle them. Here are how the two leading candidates stand on this issue:

Lieutenant Governor Healey has outlined two proposals including introduce severe penalties for companies that hire illegal immigrants and not allow illegal immigrants to obtain a valid drivers license. Healey additionally wants to create a system so that driver’s licenses issued to non-permanent immigrants should expire on the same day as their visas.

While Candidate Deval Patrick's website does not make any official claims on this specific subject, during the debates and from reports by CBS4 and the Boston Globe, his point-of-view has been made widely know. Patrick supports increased enforcement of employment laws to crack down on employers taking advantage of illegal immigrants, and opposes discrimination on the basis of immigration status for providing state services, including such things as public housing, in-state tuition for public universities, and driver's licenses.

While I agree that identification of illegal immigrants is good for national security, I can not make the leap to state services and in-state tuition. Patrick additionally claims that a drivers license would make air travel safer because we would know who these people are but how would they get on an airplane without a drivers license [or passport]? Post 9/11, they won't.

Any spending my hard earned tax dollars on state services for people who don't have to pay income tax in the first place is completely unacceptable. For this issue, I fully support the Healey plan and note to Mr. Patrick, so does the current State legislation - the in-state tuition proposal was soundly defeated by lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled Massachusetts House last January.

posted by TheWino @ 11:18 AM