Michael Swickard
In the discussions about giving New Mexico driver’s licenses to people from Mexico who are in the United States without legal status, we are not addressing the core issue. This fact is being ignored: People from Mexico already have valid Mexican driver licenses.
They can legally drive in the United States using their Mexican driver’s license, although it does alert authorities that they are not citizens of the United States. And if they want to permanently settle in the United States, and they want to be legal about their driving, they do need to get a legal driver’s license in our country to go with their legal residency.
So someone without legal status in New Mexico can just use the Mexican driver’s license until it becomes an issue of residency. It is hard to use a Mexican driver’s license to register to vote in New Mexico, but that is another issue. I do not know why New Mexico has issued more than 80,000 driver licenses to people who now have two valid licenses.
Sanctuary and tax evasion
One of the reasons said was to ensure that those people could be identified. Just look at their Mexican driver’s license. Some people do not wish to present credentials showing they do not have legal status, so they conceal their identity.
Is it not a crime to conceal identity? What happens to me if I conceal my identity from the police? They cannot get me to jail fast enough. Some people can legally conceal their identity while others cannot. Why do they have a right to conceal their identity that as a citizen I do not?
More importantly, the New Mexico driver’s license is not being used to drive; it is being used as a backdoor bid for sanctuary in our country. They want a different driver’s license to give them tacit U.S. citizenship. Giving a second set of identity papers to people in our country without legal status has nothing to do with driving and everything to do with giving sanctuary to populations from Mexico.
Should they be able to come to our country outside of the legal process? The legal answer is no, while the political answer is that it depends upon the politician. There is a political advantage to some politicians to ignore some laws. Me, I say uphold the law or repeal the law, but never just ignore laws. Soon we become a nation not of laws.
One of the most problematic issues is the under-economy or informal economy through which goods and services are bartered and no taxes are collected. People living in the informal economy do not wish to pay taxes, so they hide their income and their status, thereby keeping for themselves all of the taxes that otherwise would have been collected. We law-abiding citizens then must pay our share, and theirs.
While some people in our country without legal status might want citizenship, if our country does another round of amnesty, it will come as a rude shock, as it did to people in the Reagan generation, that quite a few people in the informal economy do not want to become legal citizens and pay U.S. taxes.
Making it easier to obey the law
We are left with the sanctuary question. This is where I would like to find a sustainable solution to this problem. Neither the people without legal status nor the citizens of our country are helped when laws are not obeyed. The one fact I know: Our country is made stronger when we attract people of other countries overtly and legally. The debate should be about making it easier to obey the immigration laws than break them as it is now. Look at the incentives for following the law to see if they make sense.
To understand this we should think of our standing in the world. Our country has been and is now the beacon of prosperity shining a light of freedom for all people in the world to see. Abraham Lincoln, in his message to Congress in 1862 wrote, “We hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
I am especially in awe of people who come to our country in search of freedom and opportunity. They must leave all they know and love behind for an ideal. Yes, we are a country that contains the ideal of freedom, opportunity and property rights. In many countries the strata in which you are born is the strata you will be in when you die. Not so our country.
I am proud of our country as a beacon to all who want the opportunity to work for a better life. We are a big country with enough room for any and all who wish to come. We are made stronger by our immigrants who bring their desire for a better life. Our only requirement is that they do so overtly and legally. We are open to those who want to be free. But to become an American carries the responsibility of our laws. Let no one cheat the American people. Let all who yearn to be free come and join us.
Let us defeat those who would tear our laws apart.
Swickard is co-host of the radio talk show News New Mexico, which airs from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday on KSNM-AM 570 in Las Cruces and throughout the state through streaming. His e-mail address is michael@swickard.com.