By Paul Weiser
A salient issue in 2008 presidential politics is whether states should issue driver's licenses to illegal residents. That this "gotcha" question flummoxes both Democrat and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) is unsurprisng: it pinpoints a fault-line between liberal let's-pretend and reality.
Everyone knows about driver's licenses. You get a learner's permit, your parents accepting responsibility. Later, you take your performance test from a state police officer who's as close as most modern youth ever get to a Marine gunnery sergeant. If you pass, you get a license that lets you board commercial airplanes, buy firearms, vote and stand in line at the DMV periodically to renew it.
Think! How can an illegal resident conceivably navigate this process without dishonesty from authorities? He can't prove his identity; his parents are illegals if they're even around. If he reaches the point of driver testing, he doesn't know enough English to follow instructions (unless, dishonestly, the test is offered in Spanish). What any suggestion of issuing licenses to illegals shows beyond doubt is that the state in question favors illegals over both legitimate residents *and* the law.
"Special" licenses for illegal residents are dishonesty on stilts. Given that there's a distinctive special license for known illegals, the first action of any policeman who finds a person using one must be to turn him over to ICE for instant no-questions deportation. And since the DMV must have issued this I'm-a-criminal ticket, it should beyond doubt have short-circuited the process by shipping the applicant south the instant he applied.
Any candidate - and any serving administrator, governor, mayor, trooper or policeman - who in any way accepts licensing for illegal residents stands exposed as liar, coward, contemptuous of law and his fellow Americans. So let's keep asking - it shows up the phonies!
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