March 18, 2026
Dear Representative:
On behalf of our affiliated unions representing workers who hold commercial driver’s licenses to earn a living, the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), urges you to address a major flaw in the legislation that will be considered in today’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup. We urge you to support Ranking Member Larsen’s amendment to correct this issue or, if such an amendment fails, to vote NO on the bill.
TTD unions represent hundreds of thousands of members who hold commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) and operate public transit, intercity, and school buses, and various other commercial motor vehicles in a variety of industries to earn a living. These workers underwent all the standard training, screenings, and ongoing monitoring to gain and maintain their qualifications to do so. A subset of these workers are immigrants with legal status to reside and work in this country, like refugees, asylum seekers, or persons with other temporary protected status.
H.R. 5688 and its substitute amendment, as written, would prohibit about 200,000 workers who hold lawful work authorization from renewing their CDLs and prevent thousands more from earning new licenses. This bill would effectively fire those workers from their current jobs–often union jobs with good wages and benefits–while having no effect on their ability to otherwise continue living and working lawfully in the United States.
This action is harmful to our members and unnecessary, as there is not sufficient evidence to correlate one’s immigration status with being an unsafe commercial vehicle operator, and therefore no substantiation that this legislation improves roadway safety.
Therefore, we urge you to vote yes on Ranking Member Larsen’s amendment to adopt a simple fix to correct this issue by ensuring that all people with a legal work authorization in the United States can continue to hold and earn a CDL. Adopting Ranking Member Larsen’s amendment would ensure that these workers maintain their CDLs while still being subject to a suite of rigorous safety standards.
TTD opposes H.R. 5688 as presented to the Committee. If this legislation proceeds unamended, we strongly urge you to vote NO on the ANS to H.R. 5688.
Sincerely,
Greg Regan
President