California state officials say they plan to revoke 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses given to immigrants after discovering the expiration dates went past when the drivers were legally allowed to be in the U.S.

California plans to revoke 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses given to immigrants after discovering the expiration dates went past when the drivers were legally allowed to be in the U.S., state officials said Wednesday.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
    12·
    2 天前

    The new rules for commercial driver’s licenses that Duffy announced in September make getting them extremely hard for immigrants because only three specific classes of visa holders will be eligible. States will also have to verify an applicant’s immigration status in a federal database. The licenses will be valid for up to one year unless the applicant’s visa expires sooner.

    Under the new rules, only 10,000 of the 200,000 noncitizens who have commercial licenses would qualify for them, which would only be available to drivers who have an H-2a, H-2b or E-2 visa. H-2a is for temporary agricultural workers while H-2b is for temporary nonagricultural workers, and E-2 is for people who make substantial investments in a U.S. business. But the rules won’t be enforced retroactively, so those 190,000 drivers will be allowed to keep their commercial licenses at least until they come up for renewal.

    Those new requirements were not in place at the time the 17,000 California licenses were issued. But those drivers were given notices that their licenses will expire in 60 days.

    So most likely, they will not be able to renew, even if they have a valid work visa that would’ve enabled them to keep their existing CDL if the expiration date had been correct.

    Sooo… it’s just an excuse to enact part of this law sooner, against people who otherwise would’ve been grandfathered in (and did nothing wrong), and do some damage to the economy of a blue state?