FBI arrests illegal immigrants in NM driver’s license case
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A criminal complaint was filed against a Brazilian man and a Kazakhstan woman after federal agents arrested 10 illegal immigrants in an investigation into an alleged smuggling operation involving fake documents to obtain New Mexico driver’s licenses.
For the entire article go to philly.com
I don’t know about now, but for a long time it was relatively easy to obtain a driver’s license in New Mexico. In the years I lived there, it was a matter of going in to the DMV, filling out the forms, taking the tests and trying not to look too weird when the finally snapped your photo for the driver’s license. After passing, you would wait about fifteen minutes, and the clerk would hand you your brand new license. Very cool. I am speculating here, but perhaps that’s why the suspected parties chose that state, believing it was easy pickings for scams. What a rude awakening, I am happy to see.
Now, New Mexico also used to be the number one state for single car fatalities. That’s when you don’t need to crash into another car to die as a result of a traffic accident. You roll over or strike an abutment, something. With the state being the fourth largest, geographically speaking, in the country, and with it being one of the least populated, it took some doing to kill yourself in a car wreck. Maybe the drive through liquor stores had a little something to do with it. Good guess, eh?
But I do love the state, and I really don’t like to read that anyone is abusing its good graces by trying to pass bad paper. I mean, here in Los Angeles, we see enough phony identity to saturate the nation. Walk on the periphery of MacArthur Park, yeah, where someone left the cake out in the rain, as the old song goes, and you can find anything from phony Driver’s Licenses and Social Securities Numbers, to phone birth certificates.
So if you are an employer, as they did so wisely in New Mexico, don’t trust what you read. Verify. Run the Social Security Trace and the DMV Motor Vehicle Driving Report, along with criminal background checks and the education verification. Be careful and be sentient. Do your best not to allow anyone nefarious bunch to sneak something past you.
Check them out before you hire.