Those 200,000 drivers make up about 5% of all commercial vehicle licenses, according to The Washington Post. Because of long hours, low pay, dangerous road conditions and extended periods away from home, there’s a ton of turnover in the industry. As Americans leave, immigrants have moved in and found worsening working conditions and deregulation.
WaPo spoke with Aleksei Semenovskii, a long-haul trucker from Pennsylvania who has been on the road since 2020. He’s now set to lose his license in September despite having no accidents or violations on his record.
“They’re roasting me under open fire for not having anything done illegal,” the 41-year-old Russian asylum seeker told the Post.
Semenovskii is incredibly nervous over what this new rule means for his ability to support his wife and 14-year-old daughter. Semenovskii — a lawyer by trade — and his family fled Russia for the U.S. in 2019 with three suitcases after he faced threats of a fabricated criminal case related to his opposition to Vladimir Putin’s government. During the Pandemic, he took out a near-$200,000 loan for a tractor and a trailer that he’s still working to pay back, the outlet reports. For the past four years, he’s been transporting heavy machinery, building materials, food and Amazon merchandise across all the Lower 48 states.
“This [rule] is devastating for my family,” said Semenovskii, breaking down in tears. “I’ve built this small business relying on my driving privileges. I didn’t think anyone could take this away from me for just being an immigrant.”
NPR spoke to Jorge Rivera, who, after being a commercial trucker in the U.S. for over a decade, found out he couldn’t renew his CDL. Riviera was brought to the U.S. illegally from Mexico when he was just two years old and is enrolled in the DACA program. It gave him the ability to get his CDL in 2014 and start his own trucking company.
“It was like a slap in the face, because I’ve done everything the right way,” Rivera said. “I’ve stayed out of trouble. I’ve been a law-abiding noncitizen, is what I like to say.”
[…]
“At this point, I’m just pretty much bracing for the worst,” he said.
He told NPR that he doesn’t really know what he’ll do without a trucking license, saying he’s even got his company name tattooed on his body.
As we reported last year, Trump signed an executive order that required truck drivers to speak English… even though it was already a law. Later that summer, cops ticketed two truck drivers for not speaking English at a traffic stop. Now, nearly a year after the executive order, thousands of immigrant drivers have lost their right to drive and about 3,000 driver training centers have had their accreditation revoked for failing to meet these new federal standards.
