National Id Cards

More than half of small businesses are in favor of requiring all employers to comply with some kind of E-Verify system, even though a majority of them don't use it or have never heard of it, according to a national survey. The National Small Business Assn. interviewed nearly 300 businesses for its 2013 Workforce and Immigration Survey . It found that 17% employ immigrant workers and that 46% depend on workers with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

Re "A wrong turn in N.Y.," editorial, Nov. 10 The editorial makes excellent points in favor of allowing an illegal immigrant to be issued a driver's license, but it falls flat when it attempts to invalidate the opponents. The editorial contends that "nativists . . . want to make driver's licenses a validation of citizenship rather than evidence of having passed a driving test."

Scathing attacks on the wealthy Group of 8 nations drew wild applause Sunday from hundreds of liberal activists who filled theaters around this historic capital for their own G8 Alternatives Summit. The G-8 summit of leading industrialized nations begins Wednesday in Gleneagles, about 40 miles northwest of Edinburgh.

The illegal immigrant story is probably too big to examine in one television hour, and so it's a strength of the "Frontline" report, "Go Back to Mexico!," that it doesn't aim for comprehensiveness. Instead, it takes the form of a personal essay by reporter William Langewiesche, who once flew the Southern California-Mexico border area as an air-taxi pilot. He has seen the land from above, where there's no border to be seen.

Re "Tough Stand Likely on IDs," May 3: Does it seem ridiculous that Congress is charging the Department of Motor Vehicles with the task of securing our country? Certainly, the ubiquity of the driver's license makes it a convenient check for identification. But how did the privilege of driving get so woven into the security of our nation that we can't even decide as a state who can legally drive anymore? If members of Congress want a national ID card, they should have the guts to create one. Instead, all they can come up with is threatening states with the prospect of denying airplane boarding to residents en masse.

Police officers who have reason to stop a suspicious person may also require the individual to identify himself, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday, calling such a requirement a "common-sense inquiry" that is basic to good police work. In a 5-4 decision, the justices rejected the idea that Americans have a constitutional right to remain silent. The decision upholds the laws in Nevada and 20 other states that make it a crime to refuse to identify yourself when asked to do so by the police.

California Latinos overwhelmingly favor strict curfew laws to reduce juvenile crime and gang activity, and believe that parents should be held financially liable for property crimes committed by their children. However, Latinos also call police brutality widespread, say Latinos receive unequal treatment from law enforcement agencies, and more than one-quarter call police corruption a "major cause" of crime in their neighborhoods.

Leave it to the U.S. government to once again create a situation that leads reasonable, rational people to scratch their heads and marvel at a level of lunacy to which precious few can aspire. Rightly concerned by unacceptable levels of document fraud among immigrants working in this country, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is in the process of summoning 1.

At this point in the recession, you've probably become familiar with the term "zombie bank," a financial institution that can continue operating, thanks to government support, even though its debts outweigh its assets. Now it's time to add a related descriptor to our public discourse: "zombie politician."

You've been warned Re "Tobacco warnings take graphic turn," June 21 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is mandating graphic pictures on each pack of cigarettes showing the realities of smoking. Can we soon expect pictures of obese people placed on the front door of every fast-food restaurant? Or pictures of people dying of skin cancer at the entrance to the beach? We should mandate that the FDA change its name to the FNA (Frivolous Nanny Administration). David Green Long Beach Of course these new images will help smokers stop, even if the predicted expectation is for a paltry 300,000 quitters out of the more than 40 million smokers.