Four hours ago at the funeral home, I looked down at a dead 14-year-old. This should never happen, but it will continue to happen no matter what we do or don't do. Why aren't we at least making the effort to prevent tragedies? Issue drivers licenses to registered drivers, whether legal or not.
I knew that some kids at the school where I work drive. I'd never seen them, but others had. Pretty scary - these are 11-15 year-olds we're talking about here. Many Latino, plenty illegal, I guess, but who knows. If they are illegal, they won't ever get a license.
So why not drive at 14? And while you're at it, why not have a drink or two, fill the car up with your friends, and take off down the road at high speed, because these are teenagers we're talking about and many of us, if we think about it, were lucky to survive those years ourselves.
And after the driver clipped another vehicle while trying to pass and skidded into the path of the tractor-trailer heading south on the four lane, all five were thrown from the car, with the driver somehow surviving, one of the kids I knew dying at the scene, another I didn't know dying later, and the other two in the hospital. One of those is not doing well, I've heard. He is in 7th grade.
"Go back to Mexico" is not a sufficient response. The mother I saw this afternoon is doing just that tomorrow, with her dead son.
Give them licenses. Put together a guest worker program that works for labor and for business. A friend asked seriously, "So should we give people who can drive or walk to the US a different deal from that we give others who want to come here?" Yes. These are our neighbors. As long as the economic disparity between our two countries exists, we need to treat our neighbors as we would want to be treated.
This afternoon at the funeral home, the dead boy's older brother told a teacher I was with that he would be graduating from high school this year, he hopes to stay with relatives, while his mother goes back home to bury his brother. What can we offer people like him, who are trying hard to make it here? With a decent guest worker program and drivers licenses, we can offer kids more than the chance of dying el muerto loco.