Representative Christine P. Barber testified in support of a bill she filed, H3012 An Act Relative to Work and Family Mobility.

This bill would allow all qualified drivers, regardless of immigration status, to apply for a standard Massachusetts driver’s license. Driving is a key tool of economic mobility, and having a driver’s license allows people to safely get to work, drive their kids to school, and participate in their community.

Current state law lists two license options for all Massachusetts’s drivers: the standard license and the REAL ID. The standard license can only be used for driving, not for federal identification purposes, such as boarding an airplane. Under this bill, all people would be able to apply for a standard Massachusetts license, regardless of their federal immigration status. Applicants would have to pass standard vision and road tests, submit comprehensive documents about their identity and residency, and purchase auto insurance.

“Separating federal immigration policy from Massachusetts driver’s license eligibility is common sense–our federal immigration system is broken, and it’s clear that Washington won’t be repairing it anytime soon,” Rep. Barber said. “Constituents know that the passage of this bill would have an immediate impact on the lives and success of immigrant families in our state.”

The Joint Committee on Transportation heard testimony from legislators, law enforcement, impacted individuals, and other supporters in a hearing that lasted over six hours. Hundreds of supporters attended, drawing from a broad, diverse, and growing coalition including local organizations such as The Welcome Project.

“Allowing immigrants the right to drive is good for the economy and for your pocket,” said Ben Echevarria, Executive Director of The Welcome Project. “The recent MassBudget study shows this bill would add about $6 million to state revenue and would lower individual’s annual insurance rates by roughly $20. It’s good for our economy and makes our roads safer.”

In anticipation of the hearing, Rep. Barber also spoke at a Labor Day Rally in support of the bill, and at a Press Conference to release a report from MassBudget that shows the positive impact this bill would have on our Commonwealth.

— Office of Rep. Christine P. Barber

 

13 Responses to “Representative Barber testifies with hundreds of supporters for her Driver’s License Bill”

  1. Edith Baro says:

    Why would we reward illegal aliens with a
    right that our citizens have earned?
    They are breaking our country’s laws they
    should not be allowed to even be here!

  2. Old Taxpayer says:

    It’s easy, consider the people who are purposing the bill. About what I would expect form them. What paperwork are they going to use to apply for the license? And their information will be kept confidential? We still won’t know who actually is getting these. It is near election time which should explain it..

  3. Villenous says:

    How do you earn a driver’s license?

    Maybe just make sure drivers know the rules of the road & allow them to get insurance rather than subject to some racist test of what you think they deserve.

  4. joe says:

    I can’t understand it. If a person is in the country illegally, why should they get a government id? In fact, why are they not apprehended and deported as appropriate? It’s not racist or xenophobic… I’ve been all over the world and in every country I fully expect to get arrested and deported if there illegally.

    I also disapprove of how proponents of “immigrants rights” always leave off the word “illegal”, as happened several times in this article’s quotes. There is no debate over whether legal immigrants can do X. The entire issue is about illegal immigrants. For instance, shouldn’t the quote above read:

    > Constituents know that the passage of this bill would have an immediate impact on the lives and success of illegal immigrant families in our state.

  5. Foster Furcolo says:

    This bill would enable illegal immigration, by making it easier for illegal immigrants to live and work here. This would be bad for Massachusetts in a number of ways.

    1. The oversupply of cheap labor reduces workers’ wages, and adds to unemployment.

    2. More illegal immigrants means schools are more crowded–with a lot of kids who don’t speak English. That dumbs down education. One of my high school mates is one of the top hard scientists in the US–worked with Stephen Hawking until Hawking’s death. When he taught at UC Santa Barbara, his daughter was in the local elementary school–majority immigrant. He was appalled to learn that she was in the 34th percentile, nationally, in math. “Not to worry,” her teacher told him. “Your daughter is the star of the class.”

    3. Emergency rooms are more crowded.

    4. The average Mass taxpayer pays an extra $1,500 to support illegal immigrants–things like schooling, medical care, translation services, etc.

  6. The stated purpose of this bill is to make it easier for illegal aliens to live and work in our state and consequently to enable unscrupulous employers to hire them in order to avoid paying decent wages to Americans and legal residents. In the last 10 years, Massachusetts, which has had the largest increase in the number of illegal aliens–, has not coincidentally had one of the sharpest declines in wages for unskilled workers–in the nation.
    Although Massachusetts law prohibits the hiring of illegal aliens, about 300,000 are in the state (up one-third from 10 years ago), taking jobs from lawful residents, driving down their wages and using social services while paying negligible taxes. Every illegal alien in Massachusetts costs the taxpayers of the state $4,500 on average and each taxpaying household pays an additional $1,500 on average due to illegal immigration. Illegal immigration also leads to higher living costs, reduced job availability, higher crime, reduced quality of health care for residents (especially low-income residents) as well as a degradation in the environment and the quality of life for us all.
    Since 9/11 this country has been trying to build a comprehensive and reliable system of identification to enable Federal and state law enforcement to work together to combat crime and terrorism. This bill would deliberately undermine that system.
    While most people in the country illegally are not criminals, they contribute to a serious degradation of the rule of law. Nearly all people entering the country illegally make payments to criminal gangs who operate networks of human smugglers to supply cheap workers to employers. In fact, many illegal pays for their passage by transporting drugs for these gangs. These gangs also supply fraudulent documents, a key part of the illegal labor market in which illegal immigrants operate. If (H.3012/S.2061) were enacted, illegal aliens would use more forged documents to obtain these pieces of state-sanctioned identification, thus aggravating the problems of document fraud and identity theft.
    There is already a serious problem of incompetence at the RMV. Do we need to compound the problem by inviting up to 200,000 illegal aliens to present questionable documents when they apply for licenses?
    Let us stand with American workers and against the human traffickers and sweatshop operators while showing respect for the law and law enforcement. Reject this awful bill.

    John Thompson
    Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform (MCIR).
    http://www.facebook.com/MassCIR

  7. Casimir H. Prohosky Jr. says:

    Well, as every honest, well-adjusted person knows, using the term “illegal immigrant” is negatively charged and evinces a particular political agenda. This is why “undocumented immigrant” is preferred for fairness and accuracy. Many, if not most, who would be labeled as “illegal” are actually working through the system to gain documented status. Some are admittedly not. In any case, I sincerely hope that my “undocumented tax dodging” and “undocumented racist” fellow citizens will learn to refrain from using such distasteful, incendiary and self-diminishing language in the future. That is all.

  8. Old Taxpayer says:

    As it is the registry does not have the manpower to handle what it has now. No way will they be able to check all the paperwork since a good part of it is probably forged. They do not have the resources. And Baker is expected to veto it anyway.

  9. Bob Ross says:

    I guess some have to be led by the hand and have it spelled out for them. They are illegal immigrants, because they are here illegally, hence they are in defiance of and are breaking federal law. Looks like some do not want to acknowledge that little inconvenient fact, or is it that their boss at City Hall forbids them to?

  10. TheoNa says:

    For fairness and accuracy the correct term is “illegal immigrant” and not the politically correct term “undocumented immigrant.” The reason they are undocumented is because they are here illegally. In many instances their illegal status is documented therefore making the term undocumented even less accurate.

  11. Casimir H. Prohosky Jr. says:

    Er…no. Reiterating your ignorance and bigotry will not alter the facts, which were clearly spelled out in my previous comment. Feel free to read it over again as often as it takes for you to get it. Good luck.

  12. Rachel Klein says:

    This ‘illegal’ tactic is as old as the original nazis and is meant to dehumanize people who are just trying to better their lives, to the complete chagrin of a certain fat, greedy, bigoted segment of our society. Like their predecessors, they believe that continuously repeating the lies and manufactured scare tactics will validate their efforts. It sort of worked in 2016, but most of those who got duped have wised up. It’s over, and what we’re witnessing now is the death throes of the pathetic resurgence of this current white supremacy movement. Sad.

  13. Foster Furcolo says:

    @Casimir

    Nothing TheoNa said contained any bigotry

    @Rachel Klein

    Jews who lived in Germany were not there illegally. Conflating enforcement of borders–which is done by every country–with Naziism ignores the horror of the holocaust.

    As for fat, greedy people, those people have encouraged mass immigration to replace American workers because they like the cheap, easily exploitable labor which is caused by the oversupply of such labor that they have created through mass immigration.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/trumps-invasion-was-a-corporate-recruitment-drive/596230/?fbclid=IwAR2JdrMMGUzyX8loirtx6bB_oi8xn6Ct1foUQZlsG6Hc7vgFVBeMeRi6Uas