Indian Punjabi truckers sue California DMV for revoking their licenses
Immigrant truck drivers sued the California Department of Motor Vehicles for terminating the commercial driver’s licenses of thousands of drivers, alleging the move violated their rights and threatened their livelihoods.
On November 6, the California DMV gave 60 days’ notice of cancellation to 17,000 drivers after a federal audit found that licenses issued to immigrant drivers would expire after the period they were legally allowed to remain in the United States.
In the event of clerical errors on the part of the DMV, the suit says, California law requires the DMV to change the expiration on its own accord or allow applicants to reapply for a corrected license.
“The state of California needs to help these 20,000 drivers because, ultimately, the administrative errors that threaten their livelihoods are the fault of the CA-DMV itself,” said Munmeeth Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Coalition, a group fighting for Sikh civil rights.
The Sikh Coalition and the Asian Law Caucus filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of five commercial driver’s license holders, challenging the DMV’s decision to revoke the licenses.
Since November, the number of cancellation notifications has grew up more than 20,000.
“If the court does not grant a stay, we will see a devastating wave of unemployment that will harm individual families, as well as the destabilization of the supply chains we all rely on,” Kaur said.
The Sikh Coalition also stressed that this measure was taken under pressure from the federal government. He said the California DMV failed to provide recourse and informed applicants that it does not issue or renew nonresident commercial driver’s licenses.
Punjabi Sikh truckers have become a mainstay of the American trucking industry. For years, many sought asylum in the United States and went into the transportation business.
There are approximately 750,000 Punjabi Sikhs in the United States. Of those, approximately 150,000 work in the trucking industry, with the majority based on the West Coast.
The issue of immigrant truckers became a political flashpoint earlier this year, when a Punjabi Sikh driver made an illegal U-turn at a toll highway, leading to a crash in Florida that killed three people. The Trump administration took action and found seven states, including California, Washington and Texas, which had lax licensing rules.
The crackdown has sparked a wave of racism and racial profiling against Sikh truckers, many of whom sport turbans and beards as symbols of their faith, which is neither Hindu nor Muslim.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has pointed the finger at California for issuing commercial driver’s licenses to what his department considers unskilled immigrant truckers who are putting lives at risk on the road. Many truckers left the industry after the introduction of enhanced English proficiency tests, in which road inspectors check proficiency in the language and road signs.
Policy changes regarding non-citizen commercial licensing and English proficiency enforcement could remove more than 400,000 commercial drivers from the market over the next three years, according to JB Hunt, one of the largest trucking companies.
