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Introducing her book
"I am my father's daughter"
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| DRIVING HOME A POINT ABOUT DRIVER'S LICENSES |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Thursday, July 11 2002 |
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| My recent column about driver's licenses for some undocumented immigrants opened a major can of worms. I got enough letters and e-mails to fill up an entire driver's license bureau. Some of the comments were supportive of the idea to allow undocumented immigrants seeking legal status to get a driver's license. Most were critical. A few were downright hateful.
"Undocumented immigrants are crooks," one reader wrote. "They are in this country illegally. They broke the law. Every one of them should be rounded up and deported. The 'undocumented immigrants' you refer to don't need to drive. They need to be transported back to where they belong…the other side of the US-Mexican border."
I see a bit of a problem with this person's proposal to round up and transport all undocumented immigrants to the other side of the U.S.-Mexican border. It's a fact that of the estimated 8.7 million undocumented immigrants in this country almost half of them are Mexican. However, what would 150,000 Canadians, 624,000 South Americans, 243,000 Africans, 16, 000 Australians, one million Europeans and one million Asians that are here illegally do in Mexico?
One man wrote that Mexicans in the United States come from a "lesser culture" and should, therefore, not be allowed to drive. In fact, Mexico has a rich and vibrant culture. Mexico has a colorful history, art and literature, not to mention its great music. Mexican food is enjoyed all over the world. In the United States, salsa outsells ketchup. And if you like chocolate, thank the Aztec people, who invented chocolate in Mexico hundreds of years ago. The fact that I have to even defend Mexican culture is bizarre, since the column was about allowing all immigrants who have applied for legal status to also apply for a driver's license.
Several readers, I must say, brought up serious and valid points without insulting an entire ethnic group. One man wrote, "You and I both know that everyone who works in this country needs a Social Security number. Therefore, if they are working, then they should have a Social Security number."
Of course, everyone who works in the United States should have a Social Security number. But the fact is there are millions of working people who do not have one. This is simply an economic reality. Poor people from Mexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and other parts of the world somehow find their way to the United States. Most of them come here to work and are drawn across the border by economic factors. I am not condoning it, but I realize it is happening. So if they are here and they drive, lets test them.
One woman wrote to say, "Unless the test taken by immigrants is in English, it's not the same test I took". While the language might be different the content must be the same. Driving tests are offered across the country in numerous languages including Greek, Polish, Arabic, Korean and Serbo-Croatian. After all, we want to check driving skills, not language skills.
Several readers were supportive of the idea that allows undocumented immigrants who have applied for legal status with INS to get a valid driver's license or other form of identification card. One woman said, "We all have family members who drive. We don't want them to come across someone who doesn't know the rules of the road and can cause a serious accident." One Hispanic reader wrote, "I am glad there are Hispanic people like you that looks into and cares about the problems we have in our communities."
Being blocked out of driver's license testing is just one problem facing millions of immigrants-particularly Hispanics-in the United States. We have a long list of other problems that I plan to explore in my columns. Hopefully, we'll be able to analyze and debate them in an open and respectful manner. |
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