Several forms of identification are now required from residents applying for or renewing a driver’s license in Georgia. The state Legislature adopted it after it was passed by the U.S. Congress, which made the law mandatory across the land. The objective is to keep illegal immigrants from obtaining a valid license to operate a vehicle on roads and highways.

There is a practice exercise residents can put themselves through to prepare themselves for the questions and rejections they might encounter over the various forms of ID they present to those responsible for making sure they are who they say they are. The exercise is actually based on a game most who deal with the government on a daily basis already know. It’s called jumping through hoops.

Anyone who is able to complete the exercise without losing his or her cool — unless it is leap year, when a whole new set of other rules apply — will be able to easily breeze through the new driver’s license process made in America by Congress.

Is this the best Congress and state legislators can come up with to combat illegal immigration in Georgia, to make residents carry a bunch of papers with them — birth certificate, Social Security card and various forms with name and address — to be able to legally drive in this country? It sounds like something out of the old movies on pre-World War II Nazi-occupied Europe. How many Georgians and Americans today might hear this often-used line, the one Europeans heard under occupation when traveling about: Your papers are not in order.

The real question is will this new law work, requiring Americans to bring everything but the kitchen sink from home to prove they are citizens of this nation? Of course it will. Everyone knows that illegal immigrants would not even think about breaking the law.

— the Brunswick News
Online: www.brunswicknews.com