I don’t know who Mr. R. Cort Kirkwood is or what his credentials to write about “law” are. His knee-jerk reaction (Vital Signs, November 1990) to efficiently verifiable identification of applicants for special recognition in the United States today compels me to suppose that they are minimal. No one suggests that there be any compulsion to carry a card imposed on every person found on U.S. territory; what I do insist is that every applicant for a U.S. privilege established by law must be positively and promptly identifiable as a person qualified for it. By privilege I mean simply any benefit or penalty for which an identity is listed by the relevant law as a prerequisite. By way of examples, a driver’s license, voter registration, passport. Social Security status, eligibility for some jobs. If any of these or any other examples are felt to be ones in which the requirement for identification has been improperly made, let’s rewrite the law to eliminate it. Let’s not insist that some constitutional right is infringed by effective and inexpensive enforcement of a proper-requirement.


        —W. Brown Morton, Jr.
Warsaw, VA

Mr. Kirkwood Replies:

I must admit, Mr. W. Brown Morton, Jr. is right in observing that “no one suggests that there be any compulsion to carry a card imposed on every person found on U.S. territory.” I never said any such thing. What Mr. Morton hasn’t discerned from reading the law is that the identification card legislation would require every American citizen to carry an unforgeable I.D. card to get any kind of work. Mr. Morton’s complaint is with the fatheads in Congress, not with me.

I did not “insist” that “some constitutional right is infringed by effective and inexpensive enforcement of a proper requirement.” In fact, I said “effective and inexpensive enforcement”—to use Mr. Morton’s words—of existing immigration laws would obviate the need for American citizens to carry identification papers. As I observed in the article, if Congress did its duly appointed job—to protect the lives and property of American citizens—the U.S. Border Patrol would have enough money to do its job without adopting identification cards, fingerprints, and retina scanners to identify Americans like myself, who have paternal roots going back to the military campaigns of George Washington, for the purpose of employment.