This May Be the Most Far-Flung Argument Yet to Reward Illegal Aliens

Illegal aliens can’t legally drive in Missouri. Legislation passed in 2009 specifies that applicants for driver’s licenses must be U.S. citizens, or have proof of lawful presence in the United States. Admirably, Missouri is holding fast against trends to the contrary. Nineteen states plus the District of Columbia now grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.

This, of course, does not deter mass immigration advocates from pushing their agenda and trying to systematically whittle away at the rule of law. To them, Missouri is simply another challenge to overcome. Now, thanks to researchers at left-leaning Washington University in St. Louis, they have a new argument to use, one that may hold the record as the most over-reaching, painfully desperate justification ever advanced for extending benefits to illegal aliens.

New research from the university, published in the lofty American Sociological Association’s Journal of Health and Social Behavior, finds that, “Birth outcomes improve in states that extend driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.”

The study found that “implementing license laws (issuance of illegal alien driver’s licenses) is associated with improvements in birth weight — a critical measure of early development with long-term health implications — for babies born to Mexican and Central American immigrants.” According to Assistant Professor, Margot Moinester, the study’s co-author, “These laws likely influence perinatal health by lessening deportation fears and stress. It’s well known that stress prior to and during pregnancy can increase risk of adverse birth outcomes, including low birth weight and preterm birth. By reducing the criminalization of immigrants, driver’s license laws may lessen deportation fears and subsequent stress, potentially improving birth outcomes.”

Note this is not a story in the satiric Babylon Bee.

Should you doubt the integrity of this research, please rest assured it’s based on what the university promises are objective “multivariable log binomial and linear models”…even though the authors revealed their bias by criticizing the current Missouri law, and readily admit “more research is needed to better understand the health implications of these policies.”

But, okay, we’ll play along. If the research is true, then by logical extension, every conceivable benefit should be extended to illegal aliens given that doing so would create improved outcomes. Access to driver’s license allows them to get to their job (which they’re not legally entitled to); in-state tuition enhances their education (even if that steals limited slots from American students); non-citizen voting rights (which dilute citizen’s votes) allow them to choose to grant themselves even more benefits.

As regards health care, and in the spirit of enhancing outcomes, we might as well also spiff illegal aliens with full, gold-level Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance and make the premiums free with zero deductibles, along with no-cost vitamins, diapers, and free transportation to and from appointments (even though low-income Americans, veterans, and the elderly struggle to find the means to secure adequate access and affordability).

Oops…we forgot, a lot of states like California and Massachusetts are already offering much of this.

Like the researchers of this questionable study, the politicians of those states lack any awareness of basic cause and effect; improving outcomes for illegal aliens simply incentivizes further flows which will ultimately collapse the nation’s social services, health, and welfare systems and create poor outcomes for all.