Over the last few weeks, there have been several accidents reported in the trucking industry involving illegal immigrants.
The accidents have come in an absurd flurry, and many of them have the common thread of not only involving illegal immigrants, but immigrants who obtained their commercial licenses in California.
This was already becoming a major issue for Democrats, but if a recent whistleblower report is accurate, the situation is far worse than anyone had imagined.
Jashanpreet Singh, a 21-year-old semitruck driver, was involved in an accident in Ontario, California, last week.
The accident involved eight vehicles and left four people injured, also resulting in three deaths.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated, “These people deserve justice. There will be consequences.”
While the Trump administration pointed the finger at California, Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed that the federal government had approved Singh’s work permit on numerous occasions, but unless I am mistaken, that would have taken place during the Biden administration, so this is a major problem for Democrats.
The second accident involved Harjinder Singh, who is also accused of being in the country illegally. This accident, however, took place in Florida.
The report claimed that Singh had failed his commercial driver’s license test 10 times in the span of just two months in Washington state before finally passing the exam. In addition to Washington issuing him a license, he was also issued a license in California.
Singh, according to Duffy, struggled to speak English and could not read road signage.
He added, “The truth is I think we have a lot of abuse in the commercial driver’s license issuing space.”
Mike Kucharski, co-owner and vice president of JKC Trucking, says this is just the tip of the iceberg, claiming that illegal immigrants are “killing the trucking business.”
He stated, "We knew there was an issue right after COVID because the rates dropped down, and we just thought, ‘OK, look, it's just inflation… the wars, et cetera, all these aspects causing the volumes to be down. We're thinking, ‘OK, in the long run, these volumes will go back up to what they were pre-COVID conditions or just go back to regular volumes, and we'll be back in business.’ But what happened? The complete opposite happened. They went down and stayed down, and we never knew, as truckers, what was the problem."
These rate drops have allowed illegals to exploit a loophole in the system, obtaining licenses in states like New York and California, enabling them to undercut legitimate companies. Kucharski explained, "As a business owner, I was thinking, ‘Well, who is taking all these loads?’ Now I could figure it out that this is another shockwave that's hitting the truck industry after COVID and violent volatility, these [non-domiciled] drivers are coming in and doing it for cheaper because they don't care, and… they don't have Social Security numbers, and I assume they're probably not filing for taxes. So, if you're not going to pay all your bills, of course, you can do it cheaper and keep on trucking."
This is one of the major impacts of illegal immigration, as I have reported many times. Be it these loopholes or workers who are operating off the books getting lower wages, it undercuts what we would consider to be a workable pay structure. It is also taking well-paying jobs away from legal residents and American citizens. This must be addressed for both that reason and for the obvious safety issues at hand.
