Monthly Archives: December 2015

Driver Licenses and Illegal Aliens

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Five illegal aliens are suing Oregon over an Oregon citizen-passed (by two to one) law that denies driver licenses to illegal aliens.

This is about as cynical as it gets in the illegal immigration movement. One of the signs held by protestors supporting the suit (not visible at the link unless you play the video) insists that “driving is a privilege not a crime.” The sign is correct. What the sign holder misses, though, what the movement misses, what the suit carefully elides, is that driving also is not a right and that driving without a license is a crime. Driving is a privilege, and it’s awarded to those legally in the state in the form of a license to drive issued by the state. Being present illegally in no way confers a “right” to the privilege.

[T]he lawsuit alleges Measure 88 is unconstitutional because it “arbitrarily” denies driving privileges based on membership in a “disfavored minority group.” It alleges Oregon voters were motivated by “animus toward persons from Mexico and Central America.”

This is an example of the cynicism. There’s nothing arbitrary about the law: it targets illegal aliens. It denies access to a privilege (not to a right), not to a disfavored minority group, but to those present in Oregon illegally. Unless citizens with driver licenses suspended for this or that series of law violations also are a “disfavored minority group.” Neither does it show animus toward persons of particular nationality or “regionality.” It shows no animus at all; it only says illegal aliens aren’t entitled [sic] to the privileges of citizens and aliens present legally.

Long time readers of this blog know that I take a very loose and open view toward immigration. I just insist that immigrants enter legally and that if they choose to remain, they do so legally. Those currently present illegally need only take steps to become legal—admittedly hard to do under our current immigration system, and much easier to do were my proposals or those of some of the Republican Presidential candidates passed into law, but possible to do nonetheless.

A Bit About Global Warming

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The climate panic-mongers need to explain some things. This, for instance, from Steven Mithen’s After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC (quoted at Watts Up With That:

The next century of human-made global warming is predicted to be far less extreme than that which occurred at 9600 BC [11,600 BP]. At the end of the Younger Dryas, mean global temperature had risen by 7°C in fifty years, whereas the predicted rise for the next hundred years is less than 3°C. The end of the last ice age led to a 120 meter increase in sea level, whereas that predicted for the next fifty years is a paltry 32 centimeters at most,….

The timeline that opens the article at the link is complex, and it’s instructive. So is Andy May’s article at that link.

This is Backwards

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The IMF is likely to announce Monday (tomorrow as I wrote this, yesterday as you read it) that it will add the PRC’s renminbi to its basket of reserve currencies alongside the US dollar, the British pound, the Japanese yen, and the eurozone euro. As a result of this, the renminbi will be more tightly scrutinized, and the IMF’s hope expectation is that the PRC will become much more open in its handling of the renminbi. As The Wall Street Journal put it Saturday,

Inclusion would also put pressure on the central bank to offer the same degree of clarity and transparency that the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and other vital institutions strive for.

Here, too, is Sheng Songcheng, Director of the Statistics Division of the People’s Bank of China:

We will have to build up confidence in renminbi assets from investors both at home and abroad and at the same time, prevent the financial risks associated with a more global currency. That calls for carrying out various financial reforms in a coordinated way.

A couple things: Sheng is not the top official of the PRC’s central bank; he’s just the guy in charge of one of the bank’s departments.

More importantly, though, is that this order of events is backwards. The central banks of the US, Great Britain, the EU, and Japan were open, transparent, and generally free of government manipulation before they became global reserve currencies.

So should it (have been) a requirement for the PRC, the PBOC, and the renminbi. The promises and predictions of a lower level functionary of the PRC government have little value.

An aside and a short lesson, courtesy of a friend of mine: the terms “renminbi” and “yuan” very often are used interchangeably; this is incorrect. “Renminbi” refers to the national currency, just as “dollar” and “pound” (or “British pound” where the distinction matters) refer to national currencies. However, unlike in the US and Great Britain, where “dollar” and “pound” refer also to units of the national currency, the unit of the PRC’s national currency is “yuan:” that thing in the window costs five dollars, or it costs five pounds, or it costs five yuan—not five renminbi.