COMMENTARY The deadly accident involving an undocumented trucker and three Floridians should prompt mature bipartisan immigration reform — instead of juvenile bipartisan fingerpointing.
When a tractor-trailer driven by an undocumented immigrant allegedly made an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike this month, three people in the minivan that crashed into it were killed.
Their names were Faniola Joseph, Rodrigue Dor and Herby Dufresne, all from South Florida.
I offer that reminder because it’s easy to forget that this tragedy had victims — when all we’ve really heard since it happened is a cynical cacophony of Republican and Democratic finger-pointing about who let the undocumented driver loose in this country with a trucker’s license.
We’ve got GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blaming Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom for the issuance of the license. We’ve got Newsom scapegoating President Donald Trump for letting the migrant, Harjinder Singh, into the country in 2018 after he illegally crossed the U.S. southern border. We’ve got Trump condemning former President Joe Biden for granting Singh a work permit.
And on and on, as three highway deaths devolve into a Saturday Night Live cold open that lays bare how dysfunctional our immigration system is, thanks to the right and the left.
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Harjinder Singh — who’s now in a Florida jail on vehicular homicide charges — isn’t Republicans’ or Democrats’ problem.
He’s America’s.
The sooner we get that, perhaps the sooner we can emerge from the immigration insanity we’ve been living for the past decade, whether it’s the chaos we call the asylum petition process or the cruelty we call Trump’s deportation program.
Three painful highway deaths have devolved into a Saturday Night Live cold open on our dysfunctional immigration system, courtesy of the right and left.
Consider the year, 2018, when Singh entered the U.S. The southern border was coming under unprecedented stress at the time, for a raft of reasons. The dictatorial repression and humanitarian crises in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. The sudden climate change refugee wave from Guatemala. The rising gang takeover of Haiti.
Not to mention the heightened persecution of India’s Sikhs — the religious community Singh belongs to — after Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014.
Rant, don't repair
Whether or not Singh came to the U.S. escaping that hostility, he walked into asylum infrastructure that was buckling under the weight of the migrant torrent — so much so that Border Control couldn’t schedule an immigration court date for him until 2027.
In the meantime, he was released into the country. He eventually secured a work permit — and a commercial trucker’s license two years ago. But according to a Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times report, after the Aug. 12 accident he failed an English proficiency exam and couldn’t identify highway traffic signs.
The central political dispute now is whether Singh should have been behind the wheel of a 20-ton truck in the U.S. and who — meaning which party — handed him the keys.
If he should not have been, let's ask both parties two key questions:
For starters, why did Trump and the GOP work so hard to strangle instead of untangle the asylum system?
Not just during Trump's first presidency from 2017 to 2021, but last year, when congressional Republicans let him strong-arm them into killing a $118 billion, bipartisan border bill that would have significantly shored up and streamlined asylum adjudication?
Because ranting at a broken immigration system scores more Republican political points than repairing it does.
Meanwhile, Biden and Democrats, at least until the last half of his presidency, acted like asylum’s nuclear meltdown was just a minor reactor core hiccup.
Even the immigration-friendly New York Times concluded last year that the get-in-free turnstile that asylum had become was largely responsible for the record number of migrants overwhelming the border — which later helped cost Dems the White House. So why did liberals vilify Biden when he did tighten asylum access last summer?
Because ranting at even commonsense immigration enforcement scores more Democratic political points than recognizing the need for it does.
Both those extremist impulses — either padlock immigration doors like asylum or leave them wide open — so often lead us to immigration flashpoints like the Harjinder Singh calamity.
And because Republicans have the upper immigration policy hand at the moment, Singh’s case will only fuel the demonization of all undocumented migrants.
Now they'll get branded not as Venezuelan gangbangers but as homicidally reckless motorists, even though thousands of them drive here without incident each year — while thousands of U.S. citizen truckers cause similar deadly accidents.
At least one conservative Florida Republican knows better: Jeb Bush, who as governor two decades ago championed driver’s licenses for undocumented migrants.
Perhaps Gov. DeSantis will get around to blaming Jeb, too, for these three painful deaths.
