Recently my agency has been much in the news for -(gasp)- issuing id based on fraudulent documents. Everyone is shocked – shocked! to learn that there is a little group of less-than-scrupulous translators and smugglers that have been assisting illegal immigrants to obtain id cards and driver’s licenses from Indiana. For so many to be issued, say the pundits, there must be a lack of oversight.
Document forgery has a long and dishonourable history. There’s no way that low-level clerks in government agencies can keep up with all the ways technology can fake social security cards, permanent resident cards, visas, driver licenses, id cards, and so on and on. And of course, the best place to conduct such business is in a city, where there are so many people in and out and so many transactions that the clerks don’t have time to examine each and every document too closely. And you know, this ring has been operating in Indianapolis, in the most densely populated area of the state. Funny thing about that.
I feel sorry for the Commissioner. What isn’t being reported is that this ring has apparently been operating for at least seven years, through several administrations. The current Commissioner is being blamed for something he did not set us up for at all. He has in fact tightened id requirements tremendously, often over the vociferous objections of the inconvenienced public. I think personally he really has stepped on some civil rights, but that’s just my personal opinion.
Now we’ve been told that the Governor has appointed an independent investigator. The man is a former federal marshall. All agency staff are to give this person and his staff “all assistance possible”.
I have no idea what this man is going to do, but I do know it will be neither pretty nor pleasant. I suspect strongly we’re in for several months in which my boss will have all her time and attention taken by this brouhaha, which means in turn several months in which I will be doing both my job and hers, and that while the legislature is in session. And did I mention that part of my job is writing or rewriting sections of code on the fly?
You know, I would really like a few dull moments.
You are in the wrong profession for dull moments.
Nonetheless, hope springs eternal.
Actually not, Li. There are plenty of dull moments in legal prqactice.
But you never get to schedule them for when you need them….
How about “You are in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the wrong profession for dull moments.”
At the very least, I’m in the wrong agency at the wrong time for dull moments!