Los Angeles Mayor and ex-MeCha member Antonio Villaraigosa,Police Chief Charlie Beck and County Sheriff Lee Baca have all come out recently with strong statements endorsing California Driver's licenses for illegal aliens.The statements were designed to coincide with California Assemblyman Gil Cedillo's latest attempt to get a bill passed in the state legislature and signed by Governor Brown. He has a fair chance of succeeding, because the legislature is Democrat controlled and Governor Brown is a long time open borders advocate who has already instituted a state mandated Dream Act to provide in state tuition for illegal aliens.
The arguments in favor of driver's licenses for illegal aliens are transparently phony and designed to camouflage the real purposes behind this.
The biggest argument advanced by politicians in favor of this is public safety.Chief Beck said he expected the number of hit-and-run accidents would decrease if illegal immigrants were licensed, because they would not have to fear being caught without a license at accidents. Sheriff Baca agreed with him, and doubled down saying said he believes the larger issue is finding a way to regulate and legalize more immigrant labor.
Beck also made the point that denying illegal aliens driver's licenses hasn't stopped them from coming here, and that giving them driver's licenses will mean they'll be obligated to carry insurance and valid identification, and register their vehicles in the name of the actual owner.
As someone whose been driving in California for a number of years,including the period before 1993 when the state made issuing or renewing licenses to people without proper documentation illegal, I can tell you that this is absolute bolshoi.
The majority of illegal aliens in California aren't going to insure their cars whether they have licenses or not because they tend to buy cheaper used cars it doesn't pay for them to insure. Nor is their immigration status any incentive one way or the other for them to stick around or leave the scene of an accident because Los Angeles is a sanctuary city where the police are forbidden to ask about anyone's immigration status. Both Beck and Baca have been zealous enforcers of Special Order 40, the police directive that mandates this, so, not to put to fine a point on it, they're simply lying.
If there's an accident that incurs significant civil or even criminal penalties and an illegal alien is involved, many times they simply disappear, either back over our porous border or to another locality, frequently with a new matriculo consular card that enables them to get a brand new ID and start over. I speak from personal experience.
In fact, the entire public safety argument crashes and burns when you consider that this is a state giving early release to criminals to help cure its budget woes while putting a de facto ban on Concealed Carry (CCW) permits for ordinary citizens no matter how law abiding.
Another point that the Mayor, Chief Beck and Sheriff Baca raise is that with valid driver's licenses, now at least these illegal aliens will have a valid ID. They've even talked about imprinting it with an 'I' for immigrant, or making it a different color to clearly differentiate to police officers that this person's status is not that of a citizen or legal resident.
What they aren't discussing is what documentation so going to be used to establish that 'valid ID'. The State of California, along with banks, insurance companies and a number of other entities have already agreed to accept matriculo consular cards issued by the numerous Mexican consulates here as valid ID. Obtaining these cards is ridiculously easy, not to mention the fact that counterfeiting them is not at all difficult, and in fact there's a nice little industry in immigrant neighborhoods like MacArthur Park where $20 or less will get you one in any name you like.That's assuming you can't find a Mexican consular official who isn't willing to set you up with a perfectly legitimate one for a small, under the table gratuity.
As for imprinting the license or changing it in any way from the standard California issue, our public officials are again throwing that out just to massage the public. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger considered doing this in 2003 shortly after he took over and vetoed recalled Democrat Governor Gray Davis' bill to allow illegal aliens to get driver's licenses.
He refused to do so after the illegal alien lobby, including the aforementioned Assemblyman Cedillo absolutely refused to consider it, with some of them comparing it to the Nazis forcing Jews to wear yellow stars on their clothing.Rest assured they will insist on that again, this time with a Democrat Governor who sees things their way.
Beck's argument that California should stop denying illegal aliens driver's licenses because that hasn't stopped them from coming here is particularly interesting coming from a professional law enforcement officer.
Let's take Chief Beck's argument to its logical destination: why not decriminalize burglary? After all, criminalizing it hasn't stopped it from happening, has it? And isn't the ease in obtaining a new, valid ID under whatever name going to attract people to California who might be a lot more of a threat to public safety than the guy from Guadalajara working at the car wash?
So....if this isn't about public safety or valid ID's, what's it about and why are Southern California's top law enforcement officials pushing it?
It's actually pretty simple. Chief Beck serves at the pleasure of the Mayor and the Democrat dominated Los Angeles City Council, and Sheriff Baca is up for election in 2013.
And one thing Baca, Beck, Mayor Villaraigosa and the other Democrats supporting this move know is that thanks to President Clinton's 1993 Motor Voter law, anyone getting a driver's license or registering a vehicle automatically receives paperwork and assistance in registering to vote.
Now here's a nifty idea! California has no requirement to show a picture ID to vote, so you can vote these folks once here and then truck large numbers of them elsewhere to vote again...say, someplace like Wisconsin or Minnesota, where they have same day registration.And of course, with a valid ID that has to accepted in all the 50 states because of reciprocation laws.
What will likely happen here is the same thing that happened with California's same sex marriage initiative, proposition 8. The legislature will pass this and the governor will sign it into law. Thousands of illegal aliens will swamp California's DMV offices to get their new ID's and register to vote. The people of California will gather enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot to rescind the law, it will pass and MALDEF,MeCHa and other groups will challenge it in court, where the State of California will once again abrogate its constitutional duty by not defending the new law in court. A Leftist judge will rule it unconstitutional, and it will end up going to the 9th circuit, and eventually to the Supreme Court.
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