A 77-year-old Navy veteran is having greater than the same old annoying issues on the DMV; as an alternative of asking for 1,000,000 type of paper work or ready in lengthy traces, one man is being informed he’s not truly eligible for a driver’s license as a result of he’s not a U.S. citizen.
That’s information to David O’Connor, who served his nation within the Navy and has been driving for over 60 years as each an everyday class C driver and as a industrial driver. He’s additionally voted in each election since he was 18. None of that appeared to matter to the Tennessee DMV.
O’Connor just lately went in to get his Actual I.D. The Actual I.D. is a nationwide requirement beginning subsequent yr that might be wanted for issues like home air journey. To get one, you need to present paperwork like proof of residency and most significantly, your beginning certificates. O’Connor did this. The issue got here when he offered his Canadian beginning certificates, Nashville’s Information 5 stories:
They informed me I shouldn’t have had the license within the first place ‘trigger I couldn’t show that I used to be a citizen,” O’Connor defined. “I’ve been right here for 77 years,” O’Connor stated, including, “None of this (scenario) makes any sense to me.” And nobody, he stated, has ever questioned whether or not he’s actually an American.
O’Connor was born in Canada to oldsters who have been each U.S. residents. They got here again to the U.S. shortly after he was born. In accordance to part 301(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act “An individual born overseas in wedlock to 2 U.S. citizen dad and mom acquires U.S. citizenship at beginning if no less than one of many dad and mom had a residence in the US or one among its outlying possessions previous to the particular person’s beginning.”
This implies O’Connor is a citizen. He’s voted, paid taxes and has a social safety quantity. None of this mattered to the Tennessee DMV. Not solely did they not let him get a Actual I.D., additionally they canceled his present drivers license:
Staff on the Driver Service Middle in Athens, Tennessee, the place O’Connor lives refused to provide him a Actual ID. After which issues went from unhealthy to worse. They refused to resume his license, once more questioning his citizenship and his beginning certificates.
“They stated, ‘No, that’s no good. We shouldn’t have given you the license within the first place,’” O’Connor recalled.
He continued, “And so they simply canceled my license proper then and there.
They then informed him if he needed his license again, he’d need to file papers to turn into a citizen—a course of which takes years.
“I’ll in all probability be lifeless earlier than that ever goes by,” he informed Information 5.
With O’Connor not with the ability to drive, Information 5 took his scenario to the Commissioner of the Tennessee Division of Security and Homeland Safety, a person named Jeff Lengthy. Information 5 says Lengthy was “sympathetic” to O’Connor’s scenario and promised to assist by wanting into it. Besides that was an empty promise as Information 5 and O’Connor say they haven’t heard a phrase from Lengthy.
The DMV wasn’t sympathetic both. In a press release to Information 5, the division cited a Tennessee regulation handed in 2018 that took away the best of non-citizens to have a driver’s license as the rationale they took O’Connor’s, nonetheless ignoring the truth that he is a citizen. Now, O’Connor can do nothing however wait and hope the scenario will get resolved.
