Baby Passports

From snuggling to smuggling.

Max Cannon is a young man on the move. He’s got places to go. But Max has some problems. He lacks a passport, for one. For another, his mom won’t unbuckle him from his damn baby carriage. But the travel document is the bigger problem at present. Max’s parents Chris and Mary would like to take six-month-old Max down to Texas to see his grandparents, with whom Max has urgent business involving pampering. Max’s parents have passports—perhaps you think that should be enough. Don’t be naive, citizen. Security is a major concern and where would America be if a six-month-old could just casually stroll into the country? In a toxic diaper nightmare, that’s where.

It’s a short step from snuggling to smuggling, apparently. Babies arriving in the United States by air require their own passports. But baby passports raise serious practical issues. How can a passport photographer make a six-month-old baby look like crap? Babies don’t have the bad hair days and eye-bags passport photographers count on to make the rest of us look like escaped criminals. One is not supposed to smile in a passport photo, either. Tell your baby to look serious. Tell your baby he/she is suspected of stealing jobs from Americans. If that doesn’t work, take away Sophie the Giraffe.

Another issue: How will customs officials tell baby passport pictures apart? How will they know if a terrorist baby has concealed his true identity by simply pasting in a picture of Winston Churchill?

The crackdown on infants should be a concern to us all. There must be something behind it, some classified intelligence of baby-based plotting. Speculating about what those plots might involve should lead to sleepless nights for all of us. This does not include the parents of the suspected infants, who don’t sleep anyway. But it should give those parents something to think about while they stare at the ceiling, listening to their baby scream. That’s one angry baby you have there, folks. What is your baby angry about? Could it be angry at the government? Report your suspicions to the appropriate authorities.

For the moment, Max’s plans have been stymied. But it’s a temporary reprieve, America. Chris and Mary are working to get Max that passport and then it’s hello Dallas International Airport. But go ahead, customs officers. Search that diaper. There’s bound to be a few suspicious-looking bulges.

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June 9, 2014