CDL pause for noncitizens is more about immigration than actual safety, says Bay Area trucking company owner

A Bay Area trucking company owner says that the recent pause on CDLs for noncitizens is more about immigration than actual road safety.

Bill Aboudi of AB Trucking Company in the Bay Area of California says that a majority of truck drivers who work at the port are from other countries. He believes that the recent pause on issuing or renewing CDLs for noncitizen truck drivers may affect shipping in the Port of Oakland. 

“I would say, in the port business, 90 percent, comfortably. 90 percent are immigrants,” he said to CBS.

Aboudi says that most of the immigrant truck drivers he knows are in the country legally, but that it can take years, or even decades, for them to gain citizenship or permanent residency, which are now required in order to obtain or renew a CDL. 

“Think of us as little ants,” he said. “We just work, and we don’t bother anybody. We just want to get our job done, and we want to go home. We want to have a good life.”

“Immigrants are a target, and it creates a divide,” he said. “We need to stop this.”

In its attempt to comply with Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s new policies on non-domiciled CDLs, California has “paused” the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs according to the DMV website. 

Apart from immigration concerns, Aboudi says that the policies may affect the availability of drivers to transport goods to and from the port. 

“We won’t be able to move anything, and everything is going to get very expensive very quickly. So, a typical trip that would cost $1,000 might cost $3,000 to do,” Aboudi said. “It’ll be like COVID. We had a lot of drivers during COVID, and we still had a hell of a time making the deliveries as the surges in cargo came in.”