Advocating for ‘illegals’, the devil and driver’s licenses

Editor,

Let’s be clear from the beginning: I’m only playing devil’s advocate. 
By doing so, I feel I can throw some light on a controversial issue that is being debated in the US — issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

Yahoo! News reported that 95 year-old WWII Navy vet, Leeland Davidson, was surprised to find out that he is not a U.S. citizen.  He was born to parents who were U.S. citizens, but not on U.S. soil, so he’s technically Canadian.

According to the report, Davidson was denied an enhanced driver’s license he needed to visit Canada. Davidson, who has spent his whole life believing he was a U.S. citizen, wants to correct this. Local passport officials told Davidson that “If he pursued it, (he could) possibly be deported or could be ‘at risk of losing Social Security.’
”So, here we have an illegal immigrant requesting a driver’s license. It seems pretty clear that he should be deported. If law enforcement officials found an illegal Mexican immigrant in, let’s say, Arizona, that “illegal” would be arrested and sent back to Mexico.

So, why does Mr. Davidson get a pass? According to people that posted in the comments section of the article, it’s because he served his country in the military and has been a productive member of society.  But as a conservative friend reminded me, we shouldn’t equivocate on this issue.

By granting driver’s licenses to “illegals” we are condoning illegal activity and encouraging it. Even if giving licenses to “illegals” meant that these drivers knew the basic rules of the road and that law enforcement officials could identify people more quickly, or that “illegals” with IDs might be more likely to report illegal activity if they knew they could provide ID if asked, we must stand behind our laws. Illegal is illegal; circumstances-be-damned.

But there are circumstances. We condone this. We grant criminals immunity or lessen the charges the state brings against them if they provide testimony or evidence that could help convict another criminal. We might even declare that someone could legally break a law if there was an extenuating circumstance. 

Why shouldn’t we recognize that there are certain circumstances in which illegal immigrants should be given driver’s licenses? For instance, “illegals” who have jobs, and who need to drive their children (possibly U.S. citizens) to school or to receive medical services — what have these people done that excluded them from being able to drive?  Certainly no more than Mr. Davidson.

Giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants is a complex issue and both sides have valid arguments. By bringing light to the case of Mr. Davidson, I just want to remind my fellow New Mexicans that we don’t live in a world where good and evil are always easily discernable. The reality in which we live is complicated and in order to ensure that people are served by justice and not victims to it, we must recognize the dangers of validating false equivalencies like “illegal immigrant equals danger to the U.S.”

David Luna
UNM Faculty