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A week after immigration groups filed suit, california The suspension of 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses will be postponed until March to give more time to ensure that truckers and bus drivers who legally obtained their driver’s licenses can keep them, the agency said Tuesday.
California decided to revoke those permits after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pressured the state to ensure immigrants who were in the country illegally were not granted permits. The Department of Transportation has been prioritizing this issue ever since a truck driver who did not have the right to enter the United States made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash. Florida Three people died in August.
Duffy had no immediate comment on the delay. California officials are working to ensure the federal Department of Transportation is satisfied with the changes they implement. The state had planned to resume issuing commercial driver licenses in mid-December, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration blocked that plan.
“Business drivers are an important part of our economy – without them, our supply chains wouldn’t move and our communities wouldn’t stay connected,” said DMV Director Steve Gordon.
this sikh alliancea national group that defends civil rights sikhthe San Francisco-based Asian Legal Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of California drivers. They say immigrant truck drivers are being unfairly targeted. The driver in the Florida crash and another fatal crash in California in October were both Sikhs.
Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but the non-domiciled driver’s licenses these immigrants can obtain only account for about 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses, or about 200,000 drivers. The Department of Transportation also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit who noncitizens could obtain licenses, but courts have put the new rules on hold.
Mumeeth Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Alliance, said the delay “is an important step in mitigating the immediate threat to the lives and livelihoods of these drivers.”
Duffy threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funds from California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota after the audit found significant problems with existing rules, such as commercial licenses remaining valid long after immigrant truck drivers’ work permits expired.
Trucking trade groups have praised efforts to take unqualified drivers off the road who don’t have licenses or don’t speak English. They also applauded the Department of Transportation’s move to crack down on questionable commercial driver license schools.