California to Revoke 17,000 Immigrant Commercial Driver’s Licenses

California is planning to revoke 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses given to immigrants in the past. The revocation plan came about when officials “discovered” many of those immigrants are no longer legally entitled to live in the United States.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the Trump administration have been super critical of California and other states granting driver’s licenses to people living in the U.S. illegally.

After much denial and defense of the driver’s licenses, Duffy said the California plan is an admission of improper actions by California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrats running the state.

“After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed. Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked,” Duffy said. “This is just the tip of iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses.”

Newsom’s PR staff said the licenses being revoked had valid work authorizations from the federal government. Then his team modified the statement and noted the license holders violated state law. After that statement, Newsom’s administration said the state made the mistake of not putting an expiration date on the license to coincide with the expiration of a person’s legal status to be in the U.S.

But the bottom-line is people are very concerned. A crash in California a month ago was allegedly caused by a driver in this country illegally. One in Florida a couple of months ago killed 3 people who a driver — here illegally — did an illegal u-turn.

Duffy has gone after California and five other states for improperly issuing driver’s licenses to people here illegally. California is the only state he’s targeted and that’s only because the Golden State completed its audit ahead of the other states.

The Department of Transportation has taken $40 million in funding away from California because the state has not enforced regulations that require truck drivers to speak English. Late last week, Duffy said he’s going to take another $160 million away from California if the state does not invalidate all illegal licenses, and address the issue.

The 17,000 license revocations is the state’s attempt to satisfy Duffy’s demands.

Duffy has also put new rules in place for commercial licenses. States must verify an applicant’s legal status with the federal government before a license can be issued. As it stands now, just 10,000 of the 200,000 non-citizens with commercial licenses would qualify to keep them.

Source link: Insurance Journal — https://bit.ly/3LQxFNa