Immigrants Push for License to Drive
April 11, 2019. This article personalizes the issues facing immigrants without documentation by detailing the problems facing a farm worker in Upstate New York where public transportation and walk-ability makes car transportation a necessity. “Necessity forces us to take a risk,” Jiménez said in Spanish as he drove home recently. “We have to work, we have to buy food. Sometimes we get sick and workers like me can’t drive to a hospital, can’t buy medicine. But I feel I need to take the risk so that my kids and my family can have a better life.”
The article notes that a dozen states allow immigrants access to licenses including California, Colorado and Illinois, some of them accepting state tax returns as identification.
In New York, farm workers make up only about 10,000 of the estimated 265,000 immigrants without legal documents expected to get driver’s licenses, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. But they might get the most use out of licenses.
Read FPI’s report Driving Together: Benefits of Allowing Driver’s Licenses for All
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Immigrants Push for License to Drive
April 11, 2019. This article personalizes the issues facing immigrants without documentation by detailing the problems facing a farm worker in Upstate New York where public transportation and walk-ability makes car transportation a necessity. “Necessity forces us to take a risk,” Jiménez said in Spanish as he drove home recently. “We have to work, we have to buy food. Sometimes we get sick and workers like me can’t drive to a hospital, can’t buy medicine. But I feel I need to take the risk so that my kids and my family can have a better life.”
The article notes that a dozen states allow immigrants access to licenses including California, Colorado and Illinois, some of them accepting state tax returns as identification.
In New York, farm workers make up only about 10,000 of the estimated 265,000 immigrants without legal documents expected to get driver’s licenses, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. But they might get the most use out of licenses.
Read FPI’s report Driving Together: Benefits of Allowing Driver’s Licenses for All