The argument round whether or not to maintain a legislation which is able to grant licenses to undocumented immigrants continued over the weekend, when the Republican candidate for legal professional normal joined a sitting state senator to debate the lately handed legislation.
“Law enforcement overwhelmingly supports this,” Sen. Lydia Edwards instructed WBZ’s Jon Keller. “Making sure that people actually know how to drive, and making sure that — everybody on the roads — that we know who they are, getting a license and making sure that people are tested and vetted is the best way to do that.”
Edwards confronted off towards Sunday in a brief debate with Cape Cod legal professional Jay McMahon, the Republican hoping to fill outgoing Attorney General Maura Healey’s job in January, in a debate over whether or not voters ought to hold or overturn the Work and Family Mobility Act.
That legislation, handed this summer time by the Legislature over the veto of Gov. Charlie Baker, will permit the registry to license immigrants with out lawful presence within the Bay State beginning in July, offered they will show their identification utilizing house nation documentation.
McMahon and each different Republican working statewide has come out towards poll Question 4, which in November will ask voters whether or not the state ought to hold the brand new legislation.
McMahon says it sends the improper message to these people who find themselves already breaking the immigration legislation and voters ought to say no to preserving it.
“It rewards people who have been here, who came here illegally,” he mentioned. “It’s giving them some kind of documents of legitimacy through the state.”
Further, McMahon mentioned, the U.S. Constitution prohibits a state from recognizing a international nationwide, a task he says should be seen to by the Executive Branch.
“That has to be done by the president and he does that through the State Department,” McMahon mentioned. “It also makes Massachusetts a magnet, because it gives illegal aliens who are entering the country illegally, it gives them legitimacy where otherwise they don’t have it. We don’t know who those people are.”
McMahon went on to say that since Massachusetts registers drivers to vote upon licensing, the legislation raises issues in regards to the integrity of our elections.
Edwards mentioned the legislation, already applied in a number of states, hasn’t precipitated the issues Republicans are elevating.
“There are 17 states that already are doing this. So the recognition of foreign nationals is an argument that doesn’t actually fly and is, practically, actually implemented,” Edwards mentioned. “We’re making sure people are tested and vetted and that’s exactly what we’re actually going to do, is find out who they are.”
Edwards mentioned the argument about voter registration can also be a crimson herring.
She cited her expertise as an immigration legal professional as proof that many inexperienced card holders navigate the licensing course of already and with no concern about any of them being registered to vote improperly surfacing since that turned the norm for drivers in Massachusetts.
McMahon will face former City Councilor Andrea Campbell within the November normal election for legal professional normal.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”