Maryland tragedy has North Carolina tie
A 21-year-old Marine and Iraq war veteran, and his date, were killed by an alleged drunken driver in Columbia, Maryland, Thanksgiving night.
That's tragic enough.
Today the Baltimore Sun reports a North Carolina connection that should shame us here.
The alleged drunken driver, Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano, appears to be an illegal immigrant who obtained a North Carolina driver's license in 2004, then used that to obtain a Maryland license in 2005.
"It is unclear how Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano, 25, a Mexican citizen living in Laurel, came to the United States or whether the North Carolina license was his first, but anti-immigration activists said yesterday that until North Carolina changed its licensing laws in August, the state was a magnet for immigration fraud," the Sun reports.
I hope our laws have been sufficiently tightened. It was about time -- but too late as far as Marine Cpl. Brian Mathews and Jennifer Bower were concerned.
Comments (8)
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Wouldn't the laws on drunk driving (and perhaps vehicular homicide or whatever is tacked on) trump any immigration laws, anyway?
Would it have mattered if this guy had, say, been here on a legal student visa from Eastern Europe?
Posted on November 30, 2006 2:45 PM
No, it would not have mattered to Mathews and Bower if they had been killed by a citizen or someone else residing legally in this country.
But that's not what happened. They were killed, allegedly, by someone who should not have been in this country at all. He should not have had a license to drive here. He should have been detected and deported.
Posted on November 30, 2006 3:03 PM
When I get killed by a drunk driver they damn sure better be from this country, dammit!
Posted on November 30, 2006 3:51 PM
Somehow, this is all Terry Grier's fault. I can't put my finger on how, just yet. But I know there is a connection.
I also have a new hemmorhoid flaring up, that's his fault too.
He's such a miserable SOB.
Posted on December 1, 2006 1:24 PM
Hammy, I think you could be on to something.
I don't agree however that Teery Grier is miserble SOB. I mean, according to him, he received a "calling" while he was interviewing in Charlotte that he realized his work in Guilford Co. was not done, and Charlotte just did not feel right. (I don't agree with the people who said he just came back because he knew he wasn't going to get hired. I think he really was "visited", probably by one of the same spirits that told Dot she could make Central white again.) I feel he heard a voice that told him to come back to Guilford.
He recently was made essentially "Superindendant for Life". Makes a good salary. Recent raise. Eats well on the taxpayers dime at the best restaurants in town. (Come on we can't expect him to meet with vendors etc. like Sodhexo at Jack in the Box). So essentially the man has that Zen-like serenity of knowing he is where he was meant to be, he's making good dough, he has guaranteed employement. Why would he be a miserable SOB?
Posted on December 1, 2006 2:53 PM
Doug -- I guess what I'm thinking is that a drunk driver is a drunk driver. Plenty of drunk drivers take to the roads without a license, anyway. Plenty of illegal aliens don't have licenses.
So here's the question: What did he really *gain* from having a North Carolina or a Maryland license? He could have had neither of them, yet still been in this country, in that car, with the same amount of alcohol.
(If the answer is that he used the license to buy the alcohol, then he's no different from the thousands of college students with fake IDs. If you want to crack down on that as well, I think I'd agree with you.)
Posted on December 2, 2006 7:01 PM
I agree the same thing might have happened. But who knows? Without a license, maybe he would not have been driving. Maybe at some time he would have been stopped for a license check and been flagged as an illegal and deported. The real point is that he was not entitled to be a licensed driver.
Posted on December 2, 2006 7:09 PM
You will also find that most of them do not carry car insurance. The state has said is to much trouble to track them down. Let your expire and they will not have any trouble tracking you down.I wrote a lte in May about a place in Maryland that would take illegals to NC for license,for a fee. It was not printed. Mr.Clark if you really belived what you have printed you would be raising hell to get illegals out of the country. Not the case.
Posted on December 3, 2006 8:08 AM