No licenses for illegal immigrants hurts Americans

posted by Bill Arnett @ 10:30 AM Permalink

After much ballyhooing, pi$$ing and moaning, Governor Spitzer of New York is abandoning his quite sensible plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. This is short-sighted and disappointing on many levels, but it will plainly be American citizens that will be paying for this in both the short and long run.

I know of no one who thinks they are paying too little for car insurance, but this refusal to license illegal immigrants will continue to cause insurance rates to climb ever higher.

It's pretty basic: Illegal immigrants, like everyone else, have to be able to go to and from work, shopping, hospitals, and to every place any of us have to go that requires driving a car. Without a license they cannot buy car insurance. Without car insurance a person's own insurance must bear the costs of an accident, if they were wise enough to buy uninsured motorist coverage, which directly increases the cost of doing business for that insurance company.

Those additional costs are, of course, paid by you and me in the form of ever higher premiums for our own coverage.

I don't have the answer to our illegal immigrant problem, but there doesn't seem to me to be sufficient cause to inflict more pain on the public by refusing to allow them driver's licenses and the ability to buy car insurance.

Makes me wonder how many insurance companies opposed granting illegals a driver's license.

Labels: Illegal immigrants, insurance, licenses