Licenses for Illegals Will Happen

RUSH: I want to go back and revisit the New York controversy of Governor Spitzer, the driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Yesterday, the Washington Post, in an editorial, spelled out exactly how this is going to end up happening. ‘Listen to the fumblings and bumblings of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two otherwise canny and articulate senators, and you can hear a pair of candidates who probably know that granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants is smart public policy.’ It is? It is not ‘smart public policy.’ It’s not smart any policy! When you give a legal document to an illegal person, you have made them legal and you have made the legal document irrelevant. Smart public policy? So the Washington Post assumes that Hillary and Obama know what’s gotta happen here. It’s smart policy, but it’s not smart politics.

‘Both Mr. Obama, who supports the idea, and Ms. Clinton, who now says she does not, have come in for derision by seeming to straddle an issue that is becoming a surrogate for the broader, unresolved problem of illegal immigration. … A report prepared for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety gives a sobering assessment of those consequences. The report, based on data collected in the 1990s, says that unlicensed drivers are almost five times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than drivers with valid licenses and that 20 percent of all fatal accidents involve at least one driver without a valid license. Such drivers are also more likely to operate vehicles under the influence of alcohol.’ So what? None of this matters. I don’t see how you can make the connection here. You mean if you give ’em a driver’s license, they’re going to stop drinking while they drive? If you give ’em a driver’s license, they’re going to stop being in accidents?

So the Democrats want to reward this illegal and bad behavior by giving them US identification and the ability to vote — which is what this is all about. Never, ever forget that. Unlicensed drivers are almost five times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash? So? How is giving them the driver’s licenses going to magically make ’em a better driver? Are these people driving around without licenses when they see the bubble gum lights in the rearview mirror? Do they speed up or something and, you know, running away from the law? Because that’s probably what it is. That’s what we’ll be told. ‘Yes, these people live in total fear, Mr. Limbaugh, because they know people like you want to kick ’em out of country, and so when they get in a little traffic scrape and here come the cops in the back window, they speed up and have accidents. It’s all your fault, Mr. Limbaugh, people like you.’

It’s probably what they think.

Now, the pull quote line from the Washington Post’s editorial: ‘Illegal immigrants will continue to drive regardless of posturing by politicians. The important question is whether they will do so safely.’ Now, somebody needs to help me out. I don’t think you need to go get driver’s ed or training to get a license, do you? Maybe a little test here, but it’s a driving test. You parallel park. Most have these little sensors; it will parallel park for you. Mine does. (interruption) There’s no parallel parking in Florida? Well, no wonder the 9/11 hijackers were able to get driver’s licenses here, then. Nine of them had them. It might have been 11. They ‘will continue to drive regardless of posturing by politicians. The important question is whether they will do so safely,’ as though granting them the driver’s license automatically improves their ability to handle a car.