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This staff editorial is part of The Crimson Editorial Board’s 2022 Massachusetts Election Guide. See the full guide here.

This election season, Massachusetts voters will be asked to let undocumented immigrants apply for the privilege of being able to drive. Every practical and ethical consideration points in the same direction: Vote yes on Ballot Question Four.

In contemporary America’s age of the freeway, driving is a necessity. Massachusetts workers have the fourth-longest commute among U.S. states and have only seen that time increase in recent years. As Boston housing prices skyrocket, people are often forced to move out of the city and travel even further to work each day. Meanwhile, Massachusetts’ undocumented population increased by 60,000 from 2007 to 2017 — more than any other state. If these new arrivals are legally prohibited from driving to jobs they need to survive, we suspect the most likely long-term outcome will be a large population driving unlicensed out of necessity. This is unsafe and impractical.

It is also unfair. Contrary to popular belief, undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes every year — taxes that help to fund infrastructure, including the roads that they are too often barred from legally using. Rigid and ill-advised restrictions on who can hold driver’s licenses result in an unsafe and unfair Massachusetts.

Ironic, then, that the loudest opposition to Ballot Question Four comes from groups like the self-styled “Fair and Secure Massachusetts.” The group’s name, messaging, and substantive arguments recall a brand of xenophobic alarmism that views undocumented immigrants as inherently dangerous.

The group warns of “everything that comes with illegal immigration” before rattling off a laundry list of violent crime and drug concerns. When the available evidence points toward substantially lower crime rates among undocumented immigrants as compared to native-born Americans, the only possible explanations for such statements are ignorance or xenophobia.

Similarly, Fair and Secure Massachusetts slams question four for decreasing election security even though simply presenting a driver’s license is insufficient for voting in the state of Massachusetts. A more reasoned judgment would have recognized that fear-mongering over low-income people of color subverting election integrity is broadly unwarranted; when America has faced issues of election integrity, some of the worst culprits have come from disproportionately gilded backgrounds.

Finally, we arrive at the least substantive argument of question four’s opponents: That any policy that makes life better for undocumented immigrants implicitly rewards and encourages illegal immigration. Of course, this logic has no limit. It readily justifies any policy which hurts undocumented immigrants, and in fact, better justifies the cruelest.

The arguments against question four too often rely on a willingness to treat immigrants instrumentally — as tools of immigration policy rather than as dignified human beings. It is one thing to make directly restrictionist immigration policies. It is quite another to do so indirectly by denying innocent people basic rights and freedoms. We oppose both approaches, but hold particular contempt for the latter. The same attitude which justifies family separations and deceptive stunts at the border has reared its head in the debate over question four.

Living in the United States as a non-citizen — regardless of immigration status — imposes a vast menu of restrictions that question four would only slightly liberalize. Without ownership of one of the most powerful passports in the world, non-naturalized immigrants are barred from many of the privileges that Americans enjoy. Non-citizens cannot be granted security clearance, limiting their eligibility for important public and private sector roles. There are greater barriers to non-citizens serving in the military, despite a military recruiting crisis that continues to grow as the pool of eligible citizens dries up. “Non-qualified” immigrants — including undocumented immigrants — generally cannot receive food stamps, sign up for Medicaid, or enjoy most other federal public benefit programs. Contrary to the narrative propagated by Fair and Safe Massachusetts, granting undocumented immigrants the legal right to drive constitutes a small, measured, and exceedingly practical improvement to this patchwork of restrictions.

We cannot give in to fear unfounded in fact. On question four, that means voting yes.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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