After reading Handout 6.2: Driver’s License Restrictions, review the predictions that students made at the beginning of the lesson. Also, keep in mind the previous activity, and closely look at the push and pull factors associated with illegal immigration.

Ask students to reflect on the following quote:

The [new immigrants] have remained strangers in the land, residing apart by themselves, and adhering to the customs and usages of their own country. It seems impossible for them to assimilate with our own people or to make any change in their habits or modes of living. As they have grown in number, the people [of California] see, or believe they see, in the facility of immigration, great danger that at no distant day the state will be over run by them, unless prompt action is taken to restrict their immigration.

- Chae Chan Ping v. U.S., 130 U.S. 581 (1889)

The above passage was written in 1889 by justices of the U.S. Supreme Court when they upheld the constitutionality of the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s. Americans at this time were afraid that so-called “yellow hordes” of immigrants coming to the U.S. would undermine workers’ wages and radically change the largely white European culture.

Questions:

After September 11, 2001, what were some of the fears that arose in U.S. society? How do you think that those fears connect to the proposed driver’s license restrictions in many states? How is the situation similar to the 1880’s Chinese Exclusion laws? Are there other times in U.S. history where fear and uncertainty have prompted changes in laws related to immigrants?

Pull Factors for the Top Six States of Residence

Review the states and their figures below and write why each state might have a large population of undocumented immigrants:

Top Six States of Residence

• California 2,200,000
• Texas 1,000,000
• New York 490,000
• Illinois 430,000
• Florida 340,000
• Arizona 280,000

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2004.