Any time I hear news regarding immigration policy in Arizona, I hold my breath. First, they passed a bill allowing police officers to demand documentation from people who prompt “reasonable suspicion” of being in the country illegally. Then, they banned Latino literature and ethnic studies from the classroom because it supposedly fosters racial resentment — as if banning an entire culture from the classroom doesn’t kindle any resentment. Thursday, however, I exhaled a sigh of relief while reading about Arizona in The New York Times. U.S. District Judge David Campbell issued a permanent injunction requiring the state to issue driver’s licenses to immigrants who have been deferred from deportation under President Obama’s DREAM Act.
These DREAMers are young immigrants who have never been convicted of a felony and are high school-educated, in school or have served in the military. They’ve been given permission by the federal government to live and work here for renewable periods of two years. Since 2012, they have been banned from receiving licenses by former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.
My response to Brewer’s ban that prevented DREAMers from being licensed would likely fill the entire Opinions section for the rest of the semester, so I’ll leave that for another lifetime. For now, I want to focus on what this means for Arizona and where there is room for improvement in our country.
About 80,000 DREAMers can now be licensed and are eligible to buy car insurance. They will no longer be forced to rely on substandard public transportation, ridiculously long commutes to work or nerve-wracking drives to the supermarket. They will be eligible for more jobs, and they will be safer drivers. Their new sense of mobility, however, is something the majority of undocumented immigrants don’t have.
For the rest of the more than 400,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona, legal transportation options are still lacking. In fact, undocumented immigrants in 40 states remain ineligible for driver’s licenses. Congress has failed to produce a realistic naturalization process, and these people are not protected by the DREAM Act. They turn to their state governments for help — to no avail. These families continue to live in anxiety and struggle, and they’re unable to contribute to our country as much as they potentially could.
To put this in relatable terms, imagine not being allowed to use your usual form of transportation for one week. For me, I would be without the 118 bus. I’d have to walk or ride my bike to class, and it would be an exhausting hassle. I probably wouldn’t make it to many of my involvements, and Southwest Recreation Center wouldn’t even be a thought. Now imagine yourself having to live like that for the rest of your life. It’s unfair.
A few weeks ago, California became the 10th state to award driver’s licenses without requiring proof of U.S. citizenship. Let’s make Florida the 11th. The right to drive to work should not be something solely afforded to citizens. People who escape dangerous lives of poverty in order to work some of America’s most physically demanding jobs should be eligible for these little laminated cards. They deserve a sliver of stability in their lives, and I’m disappointed there isn’t a movement to give it to them.
I applaud the step taken by Judge Campbell, but we need to bring more people out of the shadows. Let’s make our roads safer, and let’s empower the people who wish to drive on them. Then we will have a stronger workforce that will help our country thrive.
Christopher Wilde is a UF biochemistry freshman. His column appears on Wednesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 1/28/2015 under the headline “Undocumented immigrants need licenses"]
