On Tuesday morning I drove south to Tukwila to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to have a Biometrics Scan. While this sounds like an intimating test of potential robotics (and A. suggested it meant converting me to the metric system), a Biometrics Scan is simply (disappointingly) a set of finger print scans and a photograph. It occurred to me as I sat in a chair with my number and VISA application waiting for my turn with the complex and mysterious machines that I had missed something by not working at the counter for the Department of Homeland Security. I don’t mean the money or the hours, or the unfortunate position of power in the face of hundreds of desperate individuals who need name changes, or naturalization, or extraditing. To be the person who admits or refuses the ability for people to make a new life must be a heavy thing. But the faces that passed through the office were definite and interesting, a parade of nationalities and circumstances: the middle-aged Indian wo...
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