North Carolina driving near the edge, 1 of 2 foreign driver CDLs illegally issued

By Alan Wooten | The Center Square

File photo, courtesy of The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Review of North Carolina’s non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses shows 54% were illegally issued.

(Non-domiciled is a person living in a country, such as the U.S.A., but their permanent home (domicile) is another country, mostly for tax purposes).

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration analysis sets up withholding of $50 million in federal funding by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Neither first-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein nor state Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Paul Tine have publicly commented on the report.

“The level of noncompliance in North Carolina is egregious,” Administrator Derek Barrs of the motor carrier administration said. “Under Secretary Duffy, we will not hesitate to hold states accountable and protect the American people."

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy added, “North Carolina’s failure to follow the rules isn’t just shameful – it's dangerous. I’m calling on state leadership to immediately remove these dangerous drivers from our roads and clean up their system.”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says:

• Drivers whose licenses were valid long after their lawful presence in the U.S. expired. 

• Drivers who were ineligible from holding a non-domiciled commercial CDL.

• Drivers without North Carolina first verifying the individual’s lawful presence in the U.S.

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For North Carolina to prevent federal funding from being withheld, the Department outlined the following corrective actions: 

• Immediately pause issuance of non-domiciled CDLs. 

• Identify all unexpired non domiciled CDLs that fail to comply with FMCSA regulations.

• Revoke and reissue all non-compliant non-domiciled CDLs if they comply with the federal requirements.

• Conduct a comprehensive internal audit to identify all procedural and programming errors, training and quality assurance problems, insufficient policies and practices, and other issues that have resulted in the issuance of non domiciled CDLs that did not meet Federal rules.

Oversight of commercial driver’s licensing programs drew increased scrutiny across the nation in 2025, punctuated in North Carolina by 78 removed from a federal registry.

An eastern North Carolina Baptist church, the Head Start program and a community college are among the entities with involuntary closures of CDL training programs in North Carolina, research from TCS shows. Of the 3,015 training providers for commercial driver’s licenses removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Training Provider Registry, 61 in North Carolina were involuntary and 17 voluntary.

Another 86 were among the nationwide 4,554 put on notice for potential noncompliance, TCS research shows.

The auditing process has been ongoing throughout the second term of Republican President Donald Trump. Increased scrutiny of CDL licensure programs happened after triple-fatal crashes 66 days apart involving 18-wheelers in Florida and California.

For Congress, safety is paramount in the discussion. Collateral damage, however, includes American truckers losing jobs and experiencing wage reductions from less expensive labor invading their home soil.

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Alan Wooten has been a publisher, general manager and editor. His work has won national or state awards in every decade since the 1980s. He’s a proud graduate of Elon University and Farmville Central High in North Carolina.

The Shelby Independent