In an effort to justify the State’s action in aiding the illegal aliens to compete for jobs with legal workers, the proponents of the measure – including Governor Brown – latched on to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety that found unlicensed drivers were more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than licensed drivers. (Desert Sun, May 3, 2015)
The implication in citing this study is that if the illegal aliens are granted licenses it is a road safety measure. That, however, is a false conclusion. A correlation between fatal crashes with unlicensed drivers does not imply causality. A search of the AAA Foundation’s website for the research did not find the study, but it is easy to imagine that if persons driving with suspended licenses were included among unlicensed drivers in the study that would greatly increase the number of unlicensed drivers involved in fatal accidents because it would include drivers who previously were responsible for an accident.
Furthermore, as the news article asserts, illegal aliens driving without licenses are inclined to drive very cautiously in the hope of evading being stopped by the police. So, one would expect that the incidence of unlicensed illegal aliens involved in fatal accidents would be lower – not higher – than average. Giving the illegal alien a driver’s license would change that. It would encourage both more driving as well as less cautious driving, both of which are against the public interest. By accommodating illegal aliens, California is making itself an increasingly attractive magnet for those aliens. Added to the other negative effects of illegal immigration on job opportunities, fiscal costs, etc., AB 60 is harmful to most Californians.