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The Statehouse was jam-packed yesterday…
One of the largest rallies in a decade packed the Capitol so full with supporters of immigrant rights Thursday that they spilled out onto nearby lawns.
Organizers said more than 2,000 people came to Springfield from across the state on about 35 buses to rally and lobby for driver’s certificates for illegal immigrants and others without Social Security numbers, as well as other immigrant issues.
Many of those attending were Latinos from the Chicago area, said Catherine Salgado of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which helped organize the event. But supporters also came from downstate areas such as Beardstown and Bloomington and included South Asians, Koreans, Arabs, Chinese, Poles and Africans.
“These are the people that need to drive because they have to work, they have to take their children to school, they have to go grocery shopping - things that many people don’t even think will be any problem,” Salgado said.
The Tribune has some much-needed context…
If approved, the driver’s certificates would be distinct from regular driver’s licenses and learner’s permits, supporters say. For one, they would clearly state that they cannot be used as identification for any other official purpose. The certificates are a nod to new federal standards for driver’s licenses under the Real ID anti-terrorism act approved by Congress in 2005, which several states have refused to implement.
In Illinois, the Roadway Safety and Mandatory Insurance Coverage Act has been promoted as an act of pragmatism amid one of Illinois’ greatest immigration waves, a way to ensure that everyone driving in the state gets proper training and has access to automobile insurance. […]
Brian Konen, co-owner of an insurance agency in Aurora, said he views his support for a driver’s certificate law as a business decision.
“In Aurora, we have a large Hispanic population. If those folks are not driving with insurance, our clients are getting hit by them,” said Konen, who is also president of the Professional Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois. “If we can get them to drive legally and with insurance, I’m sure some of those folks will also become our clients.”
Try to keep the discussion focused on the issues at hand, please. Thanks. And, remember, my wife is an immigrant, so if you bash all immigrants you could be dealth with harshly.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 8:46 am
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I think this is a great idea, a true win win. It allows immigrants to obtain insurance, which benefits the people; and it allows immigrants to demonstarte the appropriate skills to obtain a license. A related point, I have always thought we created much more harm then good by having policies that push illegal immigrants into positions where they have to violate the law, and in fact provide incentive to do so. The current formula encourages dealings with persons who provide fake documents and funds criminal enterprise. They ran all those commercials describing how buying drugs will support terrorism. Well here is a chance to diminish the flow of money going to crminals, eliminate the need for fake documents and the income it generates.
Comment by Ghost Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:03 am
>Brian Konen, co-owner of an insurance agency in Aurora, said he views his support for a driver’s certificate law as a business decision.
Would Brian Konen support tax payer funded job training so immigrants could learn to open their own insurance agencies?
Comment by John Q. Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:03 am
Possibly all applications could be processed directly to the immigration authority. This would eliminate additional state government processing costs, remove the burden from the taxpayers and significantly reduce the time the feds spend tracking down the illegals.
Comment by Local Boy Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:17 am
This would act as a way to document these illegal immigrants. Would it not?
Since it is legal in Illinois for police to perform “random” checks of auto registrations, I see more of these people being pulled over and arrested for dubious reasons.
I know the Dept. of Homeland Security wants to put more of the burden on local police to provide protection from these “dangerous” illegals but this makes it even easier to grab and deport individuals.
Yes it is a thorny subject.
Comment by Papa Legba Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:26 am
I am so tired of illegals having rights. There are no “rights” for an illegal. I also believe it VERY important to have one language–English!
Comment by silly girl Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:30 am
Silly Girl, et. al., did I miss something here? I believed this to be about legal immigrants and guest workers currently residing in this country; not illegal migration. This does not include dialog about addressing the illegal immigrant populations or changing the immigration numbers (deciding how many foreign citizens living in their own countries right now should be allowed to immigrate in the future). Unfortunately, to write about problems of immigration is to risk seeming to attack immigrants themselves. Even worse is the risk of inadvertently encouraging somebody else to show hostility toward the foreign-born as a group.
Comment by Anonymous Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:46 am
Rich
FYI, my wife was an immigrant, now a citizen. She has strong views against both continuing and endless welfare as opposed to workfare, on quality education (having had only one year in her former country) as well as illegal aliens.
There is a range of opinions in the immigrant community, regarding the illegal aliens. What is surprising is the lack of recognition in the citizen community that the jobs that are taken would fall (at a higher wage) to our own lower class. In fact, the real mimimum wage in the absence of illegal aliens would rise to be substantially more than the legal minimum wage.
Comment by Truthful James Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:50 am
I don’t know of many people who bash immigrants. What people have a problem with is “illegal immigrants”. Pro-illegal immigration advocates take pride in conflating the issue. Also, it baffles me the entitlement mentality that illegal immigrants have. I wonder if immigrants eighty years ago felt like the country, that they voluntarily and legally came to, owed them something.
Comment by Rosh Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 9:54 am
Wow! I would think that any law that helps make the roadways safer would be a good idea — doesn’t matter about being legal or illegal. For those that think this will increase iollegal immigration, you are wrong. We’ve tried the more enforcement — get tough on illegal immigration now for 25 years — it hasn’t worked, so maybe it is time for a new approach. This is an excellent bill.
Comment by You don't get it Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 10:03 am
All of you who are opposed to providing this to illegal immigrants can you address how the public is better off by having untested uninsured drivers on the road and how the public benefits from creating a system that generates revenue for criminals and criminal enterprise by encouraging the payment of large amounts of cash for fake documents?
Comment by Ghost Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 10:13 am
I wonder…
How many of those in attendance were “Illegal”? Would have been a good time to check…but that would have been improper search and seizure..I assume. By using that one word “illegal” it changed the whole flavor of the SJR article…”Organizers said more than 2,000 people came to Springfield from across the state on about 35 buses to rally and lobby for driver’s certificates for illegal immigrants and others without Social Security numbers, as well as other immigrant issues.” As I continued to read it I thought it was ALL about “illegal” immigrants. I love my country…but fear my government. This will only (I fear) become worse, before it gets better.
Comment by Siyotanka Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 10:32 am
Ghost — what a cleverly framed question.
First you imply that there will be fewer accidents on the highway from this bit of laminated paper in the hands of illegal aliens. That you cannot prove from data, for which you would have to aggregate the number of miles driven by illegal aliens — many of which do have licenses in their country of origin.
Then you ask an impossible, narrowly couched question on public benefit from criminal enterprises. There is only one answer possible from any intelligent person.
A parallel question might be: is their any public v=benefit from keeping our own citizens in a permanent underclass?
The correct policy question would be: what is the relative public benefit between two choices: continue to move our own lowest classes up the economic ladder at the cost to paying more for consumer products; or keeping these people in thrall on welfare to local politicians and keeping the cost cof consumer products down.
As if you didn’t know, I opt for the former.
Comment by Truthful James Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 11:10 am
If it’s a legal issue there should be help for immigrants of all kinds. If they are ILLEGAL, either get legal or get out. The key word here, of course, is ILLEGAL.
Comment by WARDOG Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 11:13 am
“Truthful,” a drivers license is a lot more than just a “bit of laminated paper.” You have to take a written test and a driving test. So, at least on that point, you’re wrong.
Also, until my wife - a legal immigrant - was issued her Green Card, she couldn’t get a Social Security number and, therefore, a drivers license. She couldn’t even get a state ID.
From the time we got married to the time she got her Green Card almost three years had elapsed.
Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 11:16 am
“You don’t get it” seems to believe that there are only two solutions to our nation’s illegal alien crisis – give illegal aliens amnesty or round them up and deport them. This draws attention away from a more effective and efficient solution – Attrition Through Enforcement. The principle behind Attrition Through Enforcement is that living illegally in the United States will become more difficult and less satisfying over time when the government – at ALL LEVELS – enforces all of the laws already on the books. It is also imperative that the government with the full cooperation of the private sector, implements certain workplace enforcement measures. The goal is to make it extremely difficult for unauthorized persons to live and work in the United States.
Comment by Anonymous Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 11:19 am
The operative word is, has and always will be “legal” vs. “illegal”. If you are an illegal in this country or state and you are having trouble getting to work because you don’t have a driver’s license, too bad. Come into this country the legal way that my grandparents did and hundreds of thousands of other immigrants came. This country was built by immigrants. I wouldn’t be here if it were not for my grandparents coming over on the boat. But we have to get a handle on this illegal situation and giving them a driver’s license isn’t going to help the situation at all.
Comment by Little Egypt Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 11:45 am
Rich - The solution to your problem is to clean up the bureaucracy so that three years = three weeks. The wrong solution is to create two classes of people - citizens for which there is one set of laws, and the underclass for which there is another.
The people in Springfield are probably licking their chops at the prospects of an entire new class of people they can enslave and who won’t have any power to fight them back.
Comment by John Q. Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 12:00 pm
“John Q.” if you really believe that legislators want to “enslave” an entire group of people, then you ought to be a whole lot angrier than you appear. That would be grounds for revolution, not blog comments at my little place. Try to tone it down, or, conversely, get off the computer and go out and foment rebellion.
Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 12:03 pm
Rich –
I confessed to overstating the case about ‘a bit of laminated paper.’ I was using it to get Ghost to get real.
But, even with the so called road test, there was a time when that was only as hard as a folded $10 bill to the tester. Indeed, one of my wife’s cousins was told that a contribution would be helpful in connection with the written test as well. We reported it to George ryan’s SeCState police and you know what that did.
In any event, the license does not confer competent driving. The rules of the road are so simple that a person who can tell red from green and who can recognize the internationally shaped signage is probably as competent without testing as your average high school student even after Drivers Ed. Experience and control are the keys. Fender benders occur from almost every direction and until the new driver kisses bumpers, or has some narrow misses, problems will occur. On the far side of five years, experience has truly bred competency if not skill. It also seems today that it takes a much longer time to breed courtesy.
Comment by Truthful James Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 12:11 pm
I have no problem providing driving privileges and such for individuals who have immigrated LEGALLY. However I do think that we should deport anyone who has made the very first thing they do in this country a crime (illegal immigration).
Comment by Kevin Highland Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 12:13 pm
I was a legal immigrant in Germany while I lived there. Listen people, other countries cut you NO SLACK when you are not a citizen. Is it fair? A lot of times, it doesn’t seem fair. Is it inconvenient - you bet!
The idea that we need to pad the way for illegal immigrants so they can feed off our social services and use this country is supremely naive.
This is not how the world works. Who would have imagined that so many Americans would try to balance their ignorance on other cultures by blinding accepting anything? Who would have imagined they could be shamed into giving blindly to others in order to not look mean?
Political correctness is not the result of understanding how the world works, it is the result of lazy people refusing to learn how the world works. Blindly rolling over and pretending to care is no substitute for learning and world travel.
All you folks who want to hang a lei around the neck of each illegal immigrant need to live in another country for a long time to see just how unworkable and disasterous your ideas are.
Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 1:16 pm
For legal, lawful immigrants, the fact this proposed driver’s license is not considered “official” I.D. is not a big deal, they have passports and visas and other documentation. Plus, they could easily show an international driver’s license from their country of origin.
For illegals, or the more PC “undocumented”, if it’s not official ID it is next to useless anyhow, like the current Metriculars or whatever the Mexican government calls those “give-away” ID’s. If you are law enforcement or someone hiring, you have no idea if the guy with one of these is who he says he is, it’s worth no more than someone’s word.
We should not be rewarding those who break our laws and resist the normal citizenship process. We should not be enabling them to be victimized as sub-minimum wage workers without benefits or OSHA protections either, and that’s one thing that will occur for certain as they are given more and more quasi-legal hooks into the regular economy.
They seem to want it all their way; no effort to become legit citizens, no documented taxes paid, but all the benefits of citizenship. Folks like my grandparents and your wife, Rich, make sacrifices and stand in long lines and wait patiently to process paperwork, only to find themselves wondering: “why bother”, if scofflaws can just ignore the system when it doesn’t suit them.
I want to give them a voter registration card, a union card, medical insurance, free English lessons, a driver’s license and a bank account card, but ONLY if they conform to what legit citizens or legit immigrants already do. If they can’t or won’t, well, I do not welcome them. Immigrants that conform to the established rules and procedures? Political refugees? Come on in!
Economic opportunists that want only to leech off the nation with no commitment to us? Sorry, we don’t want you. It is the difference between welcoming in a stranger needing shelter from the storm for the night, and letting an army of squatters bust thru my fence, take over my yard and my kitchen and bathroom without ever asking or paying, staying for as long as it suits them, then telling me I need to give them the car keys too. It’s too much. I won’t take that even from my own inlaws.
Comment by Gregor Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 1:18 pm
VM, since you lived in Germany you know that the situation is much different there. For decades, they’ve had a “guest worker” program (which when I was there was mostly made up of Turks) who do the work nobody else wants to do. We don’t have a guest worker program like that here.
Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 1:23 pm
This will soon become a mute point… Has anyone heard of Security and Prosperity Partnership? Look it up, and become as amazed as I am as to what may or will some happen to our country and soon if Washington has it way.
Comment by Siyotanka Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 1:24 pm
Illegal by any name is against the law thus “having rights” would seem to be a moot point; at least to a logical person.
Comment by i d Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 1:24 pm
Rich what I found interesting and disturbing was the fact that the SJ-R turned off is “comments” section for the article on the rally. I actually support their decision to do so, however it troubles me that they probably had to do it because of the rhetoric.
Comment by wndycty Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 1:28 pm
Actually, I have heard of the SPP and the drivers’ license issue (for US, Canadian, and Mexican citizens anyway) is made for this type of body. A standardized drivers license protocol for all three countries, with reciprocal rights, would not only be beneficial for security reasons, it could also result in better enforcement of driver safety standards across North America.
I don’t think we want to see a trend of different states issuing different types of drivers licenses for illegal and legal residents, probably using a variety of criteria for issuance. If security is a concern, this could lead to less security, not more. And Americans have already approved Real ID. If it’s a problem,
don’t circumvent it, change it on the national level.
This is an issue for the feds, and we should leave it there.
Comment by Cassandra Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 3:44 pm
The question that goes unanswered in nearly all of the coverage I have seen of the whole illegal immigration issue is WHY so many immigrants are circumventing the law. It can’t be just because they have no respect for law or the American way of life. What would they have to do to enter the country legally, and what is keeping them from doing so — cost, strict quotas, long waiting periods, the need for sponsors? Would it be possible to make the legal immigration process easier AND strictly enforce it instead of having strict rules on paper that are routinely ignored?
Comment by 'Lainer Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 6:58 pm
Siyotanka —
The Canucks are now in full force against the “Security and Prosperity Partnership.
Rich –
The guest worker program worked while Germany was prosperous. When their economy is moving into the dumper with all the expensive social welfare schemes, not so good.
Comment by Truthful James Friday, Mar 23, 07 @ 7:58 pm
‘Lanier
Interesting question. It’s a political thing and an economic thing. Politicians these days have an interest in increasing their base. They read the legal immigrants in their district as being in solidarity with the illegals. If it were possibly brought out that the illegals were taking jobs from their families there might be a different result
Economics: There is a mistaken assumption that the increased cost to the economy (price levels for consumption)if our present underclass were paid a market clearing wage to do the jobs that illegals now take would be greater than the reduced cost in welfare for that underclass plus the the additional cost to subsidize welfare for the illegals.
The second economic analysis is based to the relative movements of money through the economy — its velocity. Generally, it has been observed that the illegals cycle money out of this economy and send it back to the home country. There “mattress savings” to do this do not help the cycling either.
Comment by Truthful James Saturday, Mar 24, 07 @ 2:40 pm