Description
The discovery of his fake passport received substantial newspaper coverage in the United States because, in the words of one newspaper, it provided the first evidence of the abuse by one nation of another nation’s sacred seal and of the deliberate forgery by agents of one nation of the signature of the Secretary of State of another and friendly power.Although verifying citizenship at the Mexican border was invoked as a reason for the 1918 Passport Control Act, officials on the ground saw little value in the passport owing to the large number of daily border crossers and the vast stretch of land under official watch.An initial attempt to prevent this came in the form of a small group of inspectors hired to patrol the border, intended to make inspection more mobile.According to one former inspector, these fairly rough characters, hired from local ranchers and cowhands, rode in groups of three or four.They proved themselves of considerable value particularly deterring cattle and horse thieves from running livestock across the border into Mexico.58Wartime practices of administrative surveillance produced an understanding of identity as a problem of information, particularly its collection and circulation.After the war the individuals that officials sought to expose through information changed from German spies to political agitators, specifically Bolsheviks and anarchists, but the public pronouncements of the success of documentary surveillance remained the same.A belief in the rigorous collection of information at the point of application continued to generate the confidence that passport control could capture individual identity and thus keep the United States safe.Only a man who has struggled to get a passport on his way back to the United States can sense to the full the trouble which the present wartime regulations make.Who exactly should be required to carry these documents?Who should issue them?The requirement that applicants verify their identity through official documents presented practical difficulties that further accentuated the affront some people felt.Watts, argued against the gross bureaucratic absurdity that required birth certificates.77 For Watts, the demand for documentary proof of birth was pointless, as in many cases the requirement could only be met through what he labeled amiable minor perjuries forced upon a state with limited memory and administrative reach.This was a reference to the alternative documents the State Department accepted in the absence of a birth certificate.Officials were instructed first to ask for a baptismal certificate.He explained to the secretary of state,I have been interested, as well as amused in the perfectly frank way in which American citizens cheerfully certify to each others births, wives for husbands, husbands for wives, brothers for sisters, wherein the older members of the families and doctors and all the neighbors have been gathered to their ancestors or moved to distant and inaccessible parts of the country.78However, Watts did not retain his humor for long.He perceived an irritating inconsistency in the way clerks exercised discretion in passport applications.Watts offered the example of an absurd incident that occurred when he accompanied a distinguished citizen to apply for a passport.He sought a return to what he called the normal manner of identification, in which an individual claiming citizenship through birth in the United States in the absence of a birth certificate should be trusted to verify his citizenship, personal identity, and his chosen witness.Watts claimed to have been informed that the postwar requirement for specific documents was in fact targeted at naturalized citizens.His letter made clear that naturalized citizens should indeed be expected to provide a naturalization certificate.Documentary requirements were not only used to enforce a specific definition of respectability that took control of the verification of their own identity from citizens, they were also intended to remove the subjective opinions of distant officials.The criteria of bureaucratic objectivity constituted a regime that, at least in theory, policed its own procedures.In the interview the consular official asked Einstein about his relationship to communist organizations.The State Department had forwarded this information to Berlin in what it subsequently explained was standard practice so a consul could assess a visa applicant with all available information.Having avoided such an encounter in the past, he was described as reluctantly attending the meeting.The letters were also critical of the Woman’s Patriot Corporation.Numerous other organizations passed resolutions that condemned this group, as well as the State Department’s implicit support of it.These organizations included several posts of the American Legion, the United States Veterans Association, Quaker groups, and the Detroit Philosophical Society.88 The concern over the reputation of the United States was consistent with the belief that Einstein’s reputation should have been privileged in this situation.The State Department’s standard reply stressed that it had to treat all aliens equally as the law dictated, insisted that Einstein had been treated with utmost courtesy and consideration, and noted that he had been issued the visa because the consul determined the accusations against him were false.The nature of the mistrust applicants could perceive in a passport application is captured in Einstein’s characterization of it as an inquisition. This was a common way for disgruntled