Here’s how Obama paved the way for America’s roads to be filled with ‘illiterate’ foreign truckers

Years after the Obama administration dramatically lowered standards for commercial drivers, American truckers say their industry is being hijacked by low-wage migrants who barely know English.

For decades, federal regulations required commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers to read and speak the English language well enough to converse with the general public, understand highway traffic signs and make entries on various reports, but the Obama administration paused that rule in 2016, weakening enforcement against commercial truckers who lacked basic English proficiency, according to the Department of Transportation (DOT). While the Trump administration has since revived the rule, lifelong truckers say the industry remains beleaguered, with companies aiming to profit off cheap migrant labor.

“It has become abundantly clear that the trucking industry has come under attack by the forces of greed in America, and American truckers are targeted to be totally replaced by insourced labor before we are to be replaced by robot trucks in the medium-term future,” Gord Magill, a trucker of nearly 30 years, said to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“In that replacement, however, there is significant cost, as many of the truckers brought here to replace us are pretty low-quality operators, over and above many of them being illiterate,” Magill stated to the DCNF. “It’s hard to read construction warning signs if you can’t read English, it’s hard to read weather warning or road closure signs if you can’t read English, and it’s hard to communicate with police and other enforcement officials if you can’t speak or understand English.”

Stories of migrant commercial drivers — many of them in the country unlawfully — have begun to make headlines across the U.S.

A truck driver allegedly took an illegal U-turn on a Florida turnpike in August, blocking all lanes and instantly killing three people in a car that smashed into the tractor-trailer. What rocketed the fatal incident into the national spotlight was the revelation that the driver, an Indian national, was not only living in the U.S. unlawfully, but also a licensed trucker who could not demonstrate knowledge of the English language.

The Trump administration — which had already prioritized English proficiency for commercial truck drivers — has since vowed to crack down on state governments not doing enough for highway safety. Since the crash in Florida, other major commercial truck wrecks by foreign national drivers have grabbed national attention, drawing the ire of longtime truckers who argue the situation is not just driven by poor regulation, but also a demand for cheap labor.

Harjinder Singh, the illegal migrant truck driver who allegedly caused the fatal crash in Florida, had obtained a Commercial Driver’s License from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, federal officials previously confirmed.

However, during an English Language Proficiency assessment administered by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) after the crash, Singh could only provide two correct answers out of a 12-question verbal test, according to the Department of Transportation (DOT). Additionally, the Indian national could only identify one of four highway traffic signs.

“If states had followed the rules, this driver would never have been behind the wheel and three precious lives would still be with us,” DOT Secretary Sean Duffy said in a previous public statement. “This crash was a preventable tragedy directly caused by reckless decisions and compounded by despicable failures.”

Later in August, another crash by a suspected illegal migrant commercial driver took place on the other side of the country.

A box truck traveling through Maine went off the road, totaling the vehicle and leaving two passengers in need of medical attention, according to local reporting. The driver of the vehicle presented a Colombian passport and a New York state driver’s license to a responding state trooper, but that trooper grew suspicious of the driver’s legal status after having difficulty communicating with him.

The driver, Victor Cardona Calderon, is an illegal migrant who overstayed his visa, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed. The otherwise minor crash attracted national attention due to an American citizen, originally uninvolved in the incident, allegedly attempting to run over a Border Patrol agent who had arrived on scene.

Truckers say there are multiple issues leading to unqualified foreign drivers hitting American highways.

“Starting with the general issue of high turnover in the industry, rather than addressing those problems that cause drivers to run for the exit, the solution the industry came up with years ago was importing drivers from anywhere they could,” Justin Martin, a truck driver for over 15 years, said to the DCNF. “Be it using the GI Bill for recruiting veterans returning from GWOT [global war on terror], unemployment offices at the state level shoveling every warm body that came through the door into CDL school, to importing drivers from overseas.”

“What’s different today in the current freight market is that it is also immigrants importing other immigrants that they can exploit, since no American drivers would be dumb enough to work for these companies,” Martin went on. “Because of this, they resort to social media platforms like Facebook, where they recruit drivers out in the open with posts that explicitly state that they can and will edit your e-logs to enable you to keep driving longer than the law allows.”

The issue is not novel, with English-challenged migrant truckers having caused deadly accidents on American highways for years.

In December 2022, Saviol Saint Jean, a Haitian truck driver, plowed into a crash scene in Wyoming, killing one EMT and striking an ambulance, with prosecutors accusing him of trying to thread the needle by passing other slow drivers amid the wreck scene. During his five-day trial, which began earlier in September, he required a Creole translator to speak to the courtroom and also acknowledged a language barrier at the scene of the accident.

Jean was ultimately found guilty on all three criminal counts he faced — aggravated vehicular homicide, aggravated assault, and not moving over for emergency vehicles. The Haitian national now faces decades in prison.

Since the fatal truck crash in Florida, Duffy has threatened to withhold federal funds from three different states — California, Washington, and New Mexico — unless they adopt and enforce English Language Proficiency requirements for commercial motor vehicle drivers. All three states have until later in September to become compliant or potentially face millions in funding cuts.

But while Democrat-led states and the Trump administration trade barbs over regulations, truckers argue that transportation companies are a major source of the chaos. Martin, who now serves as a trucking industry expert after spending years in the trenches, says immigrant-owned companies, in particular, are operating at an advantage.

“Because these immigrant-owned companies have essentially ‘unlimited capacity,’ the cost for them to haul freight is way below the typical operating cost of a company playing by the rules.”

Every day, truckers aren’t the only ones suggesting that employers in the industry are guilty of corporate greed.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA), which represents more than 37,000 motor carriers and suppliers throughout the U.S., pleaded with the Department of Homeland Security on Friday to crack down on companies engaging in cabotage, a gimmick in which unauthorized foreign drivers haul point-to-point loads within the U.S. Cabotage can generate millions for employers while undercutting wages for American truckers, the ATA warned.

In the end, it’s the American trucker who loses out under the current industry climate, according to critics.

“Illiteracy tends to be a factor in the hiring decisions of various gangsters operating in the trucking industry, who run little companies that only employ their co-ethnics, whom it is easier to take advantage of,” Magill said to the DCNF. “This whole ecosystem is being used as a tool of wage arbitrage against American truckers.”

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