As someone from Belgium or Germany how they feel about driving without a valid license and they'll look at you like you asked them to calculate i^2=-1.
Same thing with no insurance.
Yet here in the USA (in most states) we can buy a car off the lot with paper/no plates and have a grace period to register it. You have a grace period on your insurance on which they need to cover the new vehicle at the old terms.
That already gives some leeway. And stretching leeway is much easier than actually getting leeway to begin with.
I'm not saying, at all, that we should let them run amok. But at the same time, the US has a ridiculous incarceration rate as it is, and it's not like we've created a utopia by doing that.
A lot of these types of people are fine driving without licenses, but if they’re without a car and no one will loan them one, that might work.