The DOT said that on Friday it will make a "major" announcement on truck safety and the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs as it audits states' practices in issuing these licenses to non-citizens.
"On Friday, September 26th, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Chief Counsel Jesse Elison will hold a press conference to announce a major initiative to address non-domiciled truck licensing and enhance safety on America’s roadways," said a DOT press release sent to Overdrive.
President Donald Trump in April issued an executive order mandating all truck drivers in the U.S. have full English language proficiency and calling for an audit of non-domiciled CDLs, which states can issue to non-citizens in the country with temporary work authorization.
Since then, most states have begun putting drivers out-of-service for lacking ELP with a few notable exceptions, but very little information has come out about DOT's approach to rules and regulation of non-domiciled CDL issuance, other than announcement of execution of the ordered audit.
Overdrive surveyed readers on the issue of allowing non-domiciled CDLs to be issued to temporary foreign workers and found 64% of readers against the idea, mostly objecting on economic fairness and safety grounds.
Overdrive conducted its own close documentation of the proliferation of the non-domiciled license around the nation, finding non-domiciled CDL issuance has exploded in popularity in recent years. As of April, Illinois was issuing 40% of all its CDLs on a non-domiciled basis, up from less than one percent 10 years ago.
A DOT investigation into Harjinder Singh, the driver behind the deadly Florida Turnpike U-turn crash that killed three in August, found that sometimes people like Singh, who was in the country first illegally and then as an asylum seeker, get issued regular CDLs, not non-domiciled CDLs.
The State Department has already paused issuance of visas for truck drivers in the U.S.
In August, the Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association called on DOT to shut down non-domiciled CDL issuance entirely.
In September, Duffy wrote an op-ed in the Daily Caller where he said truck "driving is a low-barrier industry, where all anyone needs to compete is a license and a truck. That leaves truckers vulnerable to foreign drivers undermining wages. My team is reviewing states’ approval of commercial driver’s licenses for non-citizens to identify and eliminate patterns of abuse."
To download Overdrive's July-published report, including actual numbers charting the growing trend of non-domiciled CDL issuance in the U.S., fill out the form below.
