It was just another suburban fender-bender. A car zoomed into an intersection and braked too late to stop at a red light. The Georgia woman driving it, an American citizen, left with a wrecked auto, a sore neck and a traffic fine.Rico says there's a lot more here.
But for Felipa Leonor Valencia, the Mexican woman who was driving the Jeep that was hit that day in March, the damage went far beyond a battered bumper. The crash led Ms. Valencia, an illegal immigrant who did not have a valid driver’s license, to twelve days in detention and the start of deportation proceedings, after seventeen years of living in Georgia.
Like Ms. Valencia, an estimated 4.5 million illegal immigrants nationwide are driving regularly, most without licenses, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Only three states— New Mexico, Utah, and Washington— currently issue licenses without proof of legal residence in the United States.
Many states have adopted tough new laws to prevent illegal immigrants from driving, while expanding immigration enforcement by the state and local police. As a result, at least 30,000 illegal immigrants who were stopped for common traffic violations in the last three years have ended up in deportation, Department of Homeland Security figures show. The numbers are rapidly increasing, aggravating tensions in the national debate over immigration.
The tensions seem likely to persist. The Senate may take up a bill next week that would give legal status to some illegal immigrant students. Its fate is uncertain, and prospects appear dim for a controversial overhaul, supported by President Obama, that would give legal status to eleven million illegal immigrants. In the absence of federal action, states are stepping in, trying their own solutions.
In Georgia, voters have been worried about unlicensed illegal immigrants whose driving skills are untested and who often lack insurance, including some who caused well-publicized accidents. Lawmakers have tightened requirements to keep illegal immigrants from obtaining licenses and license plates, and have increased penalties for driving without them.
“There are certain things you can’t do in the state of Georgia if you are an illegal immigrant,” said State Senator Chip Rogers, a Republican who was a prime mover behind some of the traffic measures. “One of them is: you can’t drive.”
Many Georgia counties have begun to cooperate formally with the Department of Homeland Security, so that illegal immigrants detained by the local police are turned over more consistently to federal immigration authorities.
Still, according to The Times’ analysis, 200,000 illegal immigrants in Georgia are driving to work daily. For them, the new laws mean that any police stop, whether for a violation that caused an accident, or for a broken taillight or another driver’s mistake, can lead to deportation. Since 2006, thousands of immigrants, mostly from Latin America, have been deported from Georgia after traffic violations, often shaking up long-settled families.
The stepped-up enforcement has been applauded by many citizens. It has also antagonized the fast-growing Hispanic communities in and near Atlanta, where residents say the police are singling them out for traffic stops. Illegal immigrants say they continue to risk driving without a license in order to keep their jobs. “We have to work to support our kids, so we have to drive,” Ms. Valencia said in Spanish, after she was released on a $7,500 bond in late October from an immigration detention center in Alabama to begin her legal fight against deportation. “If we drive, we get stopped by the police. The first thing they ask is, ‘Can I see your license?’ ‘Don’t have one? Go to jail.’ And from jail to deportation.”
Not a few unlicensed Hispanic drivers are traveling the chronically congested roads in Gwinnett County, a commuter destination northeast of Atlanta. Years of growth resulted in spreading subdivisions and state highways that converge at vast intersections. Public bus routes are few. To get around the county, you have to go by car.
After several high-profile crimes committed by illegal immigrants, the sheriff, Butch Conway, a blunt-spoken lawman who rides motorcycles and breeds horses in his spare time, made it his goal to reduce their population in his jail and his county. “Just the fact that these people committed serious crimes when they should not have been in the country to begin with,” Sheriff Conway said, “I think that was an insult to the people of Gwinnett.”
10 December 2010
The simple answer: go home
Rico says Julia Preston and Robert Gebeloff have an article in The New York Times about problems incurred by illegals who drive (without a license, mind you) and get into accidents:
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