What’s in a name?

I read about the reader’s experience with U.S. Immigration’s computers not being able to read a passport of someone whose first name is an initial (May ’08, pg. 11).

My official name is J. Kathleen Stewart. I never had any problem until coming back to Port Angeles, Washington, from Victoria, B.C., in December 2004. The Immigration clerk said his computer would not accept a first initial and so he would have to enter the data by hand. He was unhappy but did so.

Since then, if and when an official has a problem with it, I tell him, “If you manually type it in, it will work.”

The problem does not occur everywhere. I’ve gone through Immigration at Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Vancouver, B.C., with no problems, but when I went through San Francisco (April ’06) and Houston (March ’07) the clerk did have to type it in.

KIT STEWART

Sequim WA