Driver Licenses for the Undocumented

Post date: Sep 24, 2014 5:1:37 PM

The states in green below allow people without legal immigration status to obtain driver licenses. Those driver licenses are not REAL ID compliant and cannot be used for Federal ID purposes. California is one of the largest and most recent states to enact a separate driver license policy. Some of the commentators on the California law said that they believed that it would help reduce the number of hit and run accidents -- because one of the primary reasons for that occurring was the fact that drivers were unlicensed and subject to arrest, thereby possibly being turned over to Immigration & Customs Enforcement. New Hampshire has been going in the other direction - recently passing a law making driving without a license a misdemeanor necessitating arrest. Also the police have also been asking for identification from passengers who they suspect might be undocumented (otherwise known as racial profiling -- ACLU are you listening?) and then turning those individuals over to ICE.