Will you chip in to support our nonprofit newsroom with a donation today? Yes, I want to support My Edmonds News!
Washington state mistakenly issued nearly 700 licenses to drive trucks and buses to noncitizens who don’t qualify over the past seven years.
This issue has drawn heavy criticism from the Trump administration and others after a semitruck driver, Harjinder Singh, allegedly made an illegal U-turn and killed three people in Florida. Singh wrongfully received a standard commercial driver’s license from Washington state, the state Department of Licensing concluded.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has since threatened to withhold federal highway funding from states that issue these licenses to immigrants who don’t qualify. He has also tried to restrict who qualifies for commercial licenses, a move that is being litigated.
The growing attention led Washington’s licensing department to discover 685 other errors of the same kind over the course of seven years. All of those licenses were active when the mistakes were found. That figure doesn’t account for errors with credentials that had already lapsed.
A U.S. Department of Transportation spokesperson said Washington’s “failure to follow federal law is a blatant breakdown in its responsibility to protect the public.”
“By handing out standard CDLs to drivers who were never eligible, Washington sent unsafe foreign drivers onto highways across America and put countless families in danger,” the spokesperson said in an email. “This is exactly the kind of negligence Secretary Duffy is working to eliminate. Following the law is not optional.”
Washington Department of Licensing spokesperson Nathan Olson said in an email that the “Errors have been addressed, and DOL is working to make changes in our system, process, procedures, and training to prevent mis-issuances in the future.”
Singh and others should have received what is called a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license, meant for noncitizens with valid work authorization. Citizens and lawful permanent residents get standard licenses, which is what Singh received.
Standard licenses expire at the same time as the driver’s regular driving credential, while non-domiciled ones lapse when their work authorization expires. It’s unclear how many of the 685 drivers in Washington were issued commercial licenses that went beyond their work authorization due to the mistake, Olson said.
The state submitted its investigation into its mistakes to the federal government last month.
Before the Florida crash, Singh also wrongfully received a credential from California. Because of this, his Washington license was invalid at the time of the crash this year, Olson said.
Earlier this year, Duffy launched a nationwide audit of the states that issue these non-domiciled licenses to immigrants. President Donald Trump also signed an executive order that says truckers without English proficiency should be kept off the roads.
Duffy has pushed new rules limiting the types of visas that allow noncitizens to qualify for trucking licenses. Only those with H-2A, H-2B or E-2 visas would be allowed to get credentials. These visas make up just 10,000 of the 200,000 noncitizen license holders.
King County, where Seattle is located, asked a Washington, D.C., appeals court to review the policy shift, noting it would cost the county’s bus fleet some drivers. In response, the court last month temporarily halted these restrictions.
Also last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced the state was revoking 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses issued to immigrants because the licenses had expiration dates later than the drivers were allowed to remain in the country.
In Washington, the 685 license holders at issue have been given a chance to update their legal status if, for example, they’ve since received their green cards. It’s unclear how many credentials the state has revoked.
Washington faces ire from another direction. After the fatal crash in August, Florida’s attorney general moved to sue Washington and California at the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a permanent ban on both states issuing commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens. Washington has until Jan. 27 to respond to Florida’s filing.
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com.
If you can’t speak or read the language you probably shouldn’t be driving at all more less a big rig. On a side note are we still giving warnings to immigrants driving without insurance? This is another huge problem that has cost citizens dearly should we be victims because the government won’t enforce the law?
Is “erred” the new spin word?
It sounds more intelligent than goofed.
Anyone not having proper credentials and the ability to speak and understand English, should not be able to possess a cdl.
Your drivers license used to be valid ID. Now? not so much!
“Singh and others should have received what is called a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license, meant for noncitizens with valid work authorization. Citizens and lawful permanent residents get standard licenses, which is what Singh received.”
The error was to issue the wrong form of license to a driver who presumably passed the necessary tests to receive a license in the first place and was legally authorized to work in the US.
Conflating this administrative error with the fact that this particular driver caused a fatal accident is a typical tactic to equate immigrant status with criminality and drive fear and resentment of immigrants. If both Washington and California had correctly issued the temporary non-domiciled CDL, would this have prevented the accident? As for English proficiency: there is nothing in this article to suggest that the driver in question lacked English proficiency. In my experience, immigrants from India almost always have high levels of English proficiency but, again, it suits the narrative to throw shade on immigrants in general, legal or otherwise, and suggest that their otherness makes them a danger.
The intended takeaway from this article seems to be that there are almost 700 more dangerous drivers on the road because of Washington state’s error but there is zero evidence in this piece to support such a conclusion.
On the issue of dangerous drivers. Did you know that in Washington you are not required to take a drivers course if you are 18 or older to get a license; you just need to pass the DMV tests. I think it explains a lot of driving habits we see out there.
I dont know but if it takes you 10 times to pass a test something tells me that just maybe you shouldn’t be driving a big rig. In recent months there have been several other bad accidents where the driver was a immigrant. Then there are many bad accidents where a immigrant has been driving one recently killed a state trooper and another was a teen who killed someone and then a couple years later killed a few more on the west Seattle bridge. Whe have also had a rise in in fatalities in recent years I wonder if there is any correlation with the increased immigrant population. What I do know is it is getting crazy out there on the roads and errors like this arnt helping things.
What matters is accidents per-capita. Taking the total number of commercial drivers in WA State, are there a greater or fewer number for immigrant drivers vs native-born?
Here is another error recently a 2 time deported illegal alien illegally driving a big rig in Lacey Washington caused a 6 vehicle accident that sent 3 to the hospital he was arrested but a ice detainer was ignored and he was released back to the streets location unknown. Houston I think we have a problem.