EDITORIAL IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM AMERICA NEEDS IMMIGRATION REFORM, NOT MATRICULA CONSULAR CARDS.

AS the debate over matricula consular cards issued by the Mexican government rages throughout California and the nation, two important facts become clear:

The Mexican consulate-issued cards are an inadequate form of identification. They're also the only currently available response to serious and long-neglected problems.

That's the bind that local police departments and other government agencies, banks and other private businesses have responded to in deciding to accept the cards.

It's also why the debate over matricula consulars is the wrong one to have.

Business and government alike don't stand much to gain by accepting IDs that the FBI has found too easily obtained, too easily forged and impossible to trace due to the lack of a centralized database. But even the FBI concedes that some ID beats no ID, which, for now, is the only other alternative.

The only solution is one for which there seems to be no political will: Washington must come up with a sound national immigration policy.

The first step must be requiring every illegal immigrant on American soil to submit to federal identification.

A federal ID wouldn't indicate legal status, but it would allow holders to function within American society. Failure to obtain one would qualify as grounds for swift deportation.

Washington needs to engage truthfully and immediately in a debate on how to control the nation's borders, how immigrants should be admitted and how to properly identify millions of illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S.

Anything less, like the current flap over matricula consulars, is just dancing around the larger problems.

The current situation, in which millions of illegal immigrants live and work anonymously in the U.S., can't continue. It leaves immigrants at risk of exploitation, and everyone else in perpetual danger of street criminals who can't be tracked down and terrorists who roam undetected.

It also creates a system of forced irresponsibility, in which illegal immigrants take to our roads and highways without access to driver's licenses. As a result, they can't buy car insurance, and everyone else must pay more for it.

No matter what becomes of the matricula consulars, the broken system won't be fixed until Washington works up the will to craft a sensible immigration policy once and for all.