One of the "primary" forms of citizenship evidence is:
U.S. birth certificate that meets the following requirements:
Issued by the city, county, or state of birth
Lists applicant’s full name, date of birth, and place of birth
Lists parent(s)’ full names
Has the signature of the city, county, or state registrar
Has the date filed with registrar's office (must be within one year of birth)
Has the seal of issuing authority
(Edit: I assume that if the State Department doesn't know how to validate a particular local government's birth certificates, it's supposed to contact the issuing authority to ask.)
OT: I followed the link to the rules given in the article. While there I ended up on the page that gives rules for passport photos, since I need to get around to getting one to renew my passport.
One of the rules (added in late 2016) is that you cannot wear glasses in the photo. However, if "[...] you cannot remove your glasses for medical reasons, please include a signed note from your doctor with application".
I've never heard of nor can can hypothesize a medical condition that would not let you remove your glasses while sitting or standing still for a photo. Anyone have some examples?
If you needed them {temporarily,permanently} for some medical condition that rendered your eyes extremely sensitive to certain kinds of light, including, say, a flashbulb.
I was trying to think of any other reason than photosensitivity, but that's all that comes to mind.
From the picture and the text in the article, this appears to be an official birth certificate issued by a Kansas county, not one of those fakey birth certificates with a foot print or whatever.
"Barbara was born in a farmhouse in the 1970s in Leavenworth County. She had a birth certificate. Her father went to the courthouse days after she was born to certify her birth -- raised seal and all."
Furthermore, according to the state department website [1], one of the options for proving citizenship to get a passport is a Fully-valid, undamaged U.S. passport (may be expired). It seems like 100% BS to not accept that; regardless of the quality of the documentation provided for the first passport, it was provided and accepted many years ago (hence the renewal) and that should be allowed to stand.
Edit to add: the requirements for a birth certificate are listed as:
Issued by the city, county, or state of birth
Lists your full name, date of birth, and place of birth
Lists your parent(s)' full names
Has the date filed with registrar's office (must be within one year of birth)
Has the registrar's signature
Has the seal of the issuing authority
The image of the birth certificate from the article is heavily cropped and redacted, so I can't tell on most of these, but the document looks like a standard government document, and I can't imagine it would be missing any of those items, unless it was common practice for those to be missing in Kansas, in which case, Kansas passport officers would probably be aware of it.
This seems like government working well. An overzealous governmental employee denies a valid document, for whatever confused or malicious reason. Denied person contacts their congress representative. The congress rep gets the issue fixed.
You can't stop random things going wrong in the government bureaucracy, especially due to the human factor. If this is, however, indicative of a general trend of decertification, that is a problem.
the problem is not as simple as the headline makes it out to be. Its VERY easy to get a birth certificate. you know what proof I had when I got mine? I knew my mothers maiden name - thats it. Meanwhile, a passport is a very highly accepted form of authentication. if you can show one, its not refutable to not say its not you.
so as you can imagine, a birth certificate isn't enough. it wasn't even enough for me to get a job in a sanctuary city. I had to show a passport.
> so as you can imagine, a birth certificate isn't enough. it wasn't even enough for me to get a job in a sanctuary city. I had to show a passport.
I can't imagine this at all. I've never needed a birth certificate for a job, let alone a passport. What do "sanctuary cities" have to do with this? SS# and an address for healthcare; bank account for direct deposit. I can't think of anything else I've ever needed.
If your employer is part of the e-verify program you need identification. Proof that you're allowed to work and photo ID. So either a birth certificate and a drivers license or a passport(current or expired) which satisfies for both requirements. You can also use a Social Security card in lieu of a birth certificate. I think e-verify is required for a company to hire people on Visas.
> so as you can imagine, a birth certificate isn't enough.
Why isn't a birth certificate enough to get a passport? I got my passport using nothing but my issued-by-a-small-Texas-town birth certificate.
I can't imagine why a birth certificate wouldn't be enough. If it isn't, and only a passport is, how do we go from birth certificate to passport? Driving license? My state permitted me to get a full driving license with, again, just a birth certificate. So is getting a passport by using a birth certificate and a driving license just using a birth certificate but with extra steps?
>>This seems like government working well. An overzealous governmental employee denies a valid document, for whatever confused or malicious reason. Denied person contacts their congress representative. The congress rep gets the issue fixed.<<
Not really. Seems a bit overkill to have to contact your congress representative to fix a problem like this that never should've been an issue. In fact, it seems that the government is starting to become a bit overzealous.
Without knowing the statistics of how often stuff like this happens over the years it is hard to tell. Although I did read an article stating that the government was ramping up this sort of thing [1]. To me it looks like a very dangerous trend. Start with just a few cases like this and then ramp it up little by little. Somebody seems to be boiling the frog slowly.
It's not overkill. Your representatives are there to represent you, especially for the problems that "never should have been an issue". There are contingencies and mistakes that will always happen that need help from "higher ranking" officials. It's why you go to your boss or even higher up when something extra weird and unfortunate happens in your job.
Somewhat off-topic, it depresses me that passport requirements are so ingrained. Wikipedia:
> ...up to World War I, passports were not required, on the whole, for travel
> within Europe, and crossing a border was a relatively straightforward
> procedure...
> During World War I, European governments introduced border passport
> requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people
> with useful skills. These controls remained in place after the war, becoming
> a standard, though controversial, procedure. British tourists of the 1920s
> complained, especially about attached photographs and physical descriptions,
> which they considered led to a "nasty dehumanization"
Europe for travel within the Schengen Zone has at least been moving back in the right direction of no papers required for travel. Meanwhile, in North America and the Caribbean it was perfectly normal to be able to travel around with no passport up until just a decade or so ago.
I remember being able to go to visit Canada from the USA with nothing more than someone asking if you if you are a US citizen.
That freedom to travel is yet another right that was thrown out the door because of 9/11 via the "Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative" [1] which would be more aptly named the "Western Hemisphere Restriction of Travel Initiative"
How many people have the means to travel, the desire to travel, but can't manage to get a passport or appropriate document? My question is basically is it really a restriction of travel, or just a small hurdle to travel where there are already much larger hurdles?
Just because you don’t need a passport doesn’t mean you can travel without unambiguously identifying yourself in Schengen. It amounts to the same thing. It doesn’t matter what identity paperwork you show if it includes your full name, dob, and a biometric photo.
Try boarding a plane for a domestic flight even inside of one Schengen country without these things and see how far you get.
As someone who was born in the US at home and had a delayed birth certificate, stuff like this worries me. I live overseas at the moment, and if the US one day decides to not grant me a passport renewal, what happens? Am I not allowed to return home?
I understand not allowing things like baptism certificates or non-government recognized birth certificates, but a certificate issued by the state should never be able to be revoked.
You already have the passport. You are right to worry about aggressive misapplication of policy and an unabashedly nativist administration enabling it potentially causing some bureaucratic problem. Even a very unpleasant problem. You're not going to end up in a situation where you are 'not allowed to return home', though.
Any country that's not actually trying to arrest you or otherwise detain you and where your residence and travel documents have expired will happily put you in touch with a US Consulate and have you shipped home. Edward Snowden (just as a really extreme example) can probably be on plane to the US in 24 hours, should he choose to, revoked passport and all.
Your passport is not your citizenship status. It's the latter that grants you rights and those rights are very difficult to lose. And you can be repatriated with an expired passport (or no passport).
This appears to be part of the broader effort to make citizenship conditional for many more Americans.
The current state of that effort allows for ethnically disparate impacts ( latino populations were less likely to be born in a hospital, so their birth certificates are more open to challenge ) and due to that disparate impact also serve as a form of vote suppression.
But do not fool yourself into thinking it's not bad. The normalization of stripping citizenship creates a corrupt practice that is very tempting to authoritarians.
It does make me wonder if shit like this will be the force driving society away from nation-states to Neal Stephenson-style corporate franchising [1] or phyles [2]. When it happens to one person, it's a tragedy for them. When it happens to a lot of people, it's a very large market opportunity - providing the security, legal, and currency services that the state no longer offers.
This doesn't detract from your point about it being tempting to authoritarians - this is basically recreating feudalism with modern technology. But it is interesting that denying citizenship actually weakens the state, by creating a power & leadership vacuum that some other institution can step into.
Phyles primarily based on shared values honestly seem more sensible than nation-states primarily based on geography (although of course these may overlap). The latter often seems to lead to the 51% being the decision makers which leaves the 49% unhappy.
This reminds me of bureaucracy in India. As a foreign-born Indian I tried to get an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) which is akin to a lifetime visa nowadays.
As part of the documentation they eventually required my father's birth certificate (since he surrendered his original passport). The city did manage to find his records even though he was born near the time of the partition/independence.
However, they required a letter from his birth parents who were long since deceased. They just didn't have the logic in their system to understand this was a possibility and know what to do.
42 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 76.4 ms ] thread"Local" birth certificates, or for example baptismal certificates cannot be used as I.D. for some years. Their authenticity cannot be verified.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/require...
One of the "primary" forms of citizenship evidence is:
(Edit: I assume that if the State Department doesn't know how to validate a particular local government's birth certificates, it's supposed to contact the issuing authority to ask.)One of the rules (added in late 2016) is that you cannot wear glasses in the photo. However, if "[...] you cannot remove your glasses for medical reasons, please include a signed note from your doctor with application".
I've never heard of nor can can hypothesize a medical condition that would not let you remove your glasses while sitting or standing still for a photo. Anyone have some examples?
I was trying to think of any other reason than photosensitivity, but that's all that comes to mind.
https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/augmented-reality-explorer...
"Barbara was born in a farmhouse in the 1970s in Leavenworth County. She had a birth certificate. Her father went to the courthouse days after she was born to certify her birth -- raised seal and all."
Furthermore, according to the state department website [1], one of the options for proving citizenship to get a passport is a Fully-valid, undamaged U.S. passport (may be expired). It seems like 100% BS to not accept that; regardless of the quality of the documentation provided for the first passport, it was provided and accepted many years ago (hence the renewal) and that should be allowed to stand.
Edit to add: the requirements for a birth certificate are listed as:
Issued by the city, county, or state of birth
Lists your full name, date of birth, and place of birth
Lists your parent(s)' full names
Has the date filed with registrar's office (must be within one year of birth)
Has the registrar's signature
Has the seal of the issuing authority
The image of the birth certificate from the article is heavily cropped and redacted, so I can't tell on most of these, but the document looks like a standard government document, and I can't imagine it would be missing any of those items, unless it was common practice for those to be missing in Kansas, in which case, Kansas passport officers would probably be aware of it.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/apply-r...
You can't stop random things going wrong in the government bureaucracy, especially due to the human factor. If this is, however, indicative of a general trend of decertification, that is a problem.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/the_americas/us...
so as you can imagine, a birth certificate isn't enough. it wasn't even enough for me to get a job in a sanctuary city. I had to show a passport.
I can't imagine this at all. I've never needed a birth certificate for a job, let alone a passport. What do "sanctuary cities" have to do with this? SS# and an address for healthcare; bank account for direct deposit. I can't think of anything else I've ever needed.
Why isn't a birth certificate enough to get a passport? I got my passport using nothing but my issued-by-a-small-Texas-town birth certificate.
I can't imagine why a birth certificate wouldn't be enough. If it isn't, and only a passport is, how do we go from birth certificate to passport? Driving license? My state permitted me to get a full driving license with, again, just a birth certificate. So is getting a passport by using a birth certificate and a driving license just using a birth certificate but with extra steps?
Not really. Seems a bit overkill to have to contact your congress representative to fix a problem like this that never should've been an issue. In fact, it seems that the government is starting to become a bit overzealous.
Without knowing the statistics of how often stuff like this happens over the years it is hard to tell. Although I did read an article stating that the government was ramping up this sort of thing [1]. To me it looks like a very dangerous trend. Start with just a few cases like this and then ramp it up little by little. Somebody seems to be boiling the frog slowly.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-is-deny...
I remember being able to go to visit Canada from the USA with nothing more than someone asking if you if you are a US citizen.
That freedom to travel is yet another right that was thrown out the door because of 9/11 via the "Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative" [1] which would be more aptly named the "Western Hemisphere Restriction of Travel Initiative"
Sad.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Travel_Init...
Try boarding a plane for a domestic flight even inside of one Schengen country without these things and see how far you get.
I understand not allowing things like baptism certificates or non-government recognized birth certificates, but a certificate issued by the state should never be able to be revoked.
Unless I’m misreading, the person you replied to said, “if the US one day decides to not grant me a passport renewal”.
Your passport is not your citizenship status. It's the latter that grants you rights and those rights are very difficult to lose. And you can be repatriated with an expired passport (or no passport).
The current state of that effort allows for ethnically disparate impacts ( latino populations were less likely to be born in a hospital, so their birth certificates are more open to challenge ) and due to that disparate impact also serve as a form of vote suppression.
But do not fool yourself into thinking it's not bad. The normalization of stripping citizenship creates a corrupt practice that is very tempting to authoritarians.
This doesn't detract from your point about it being tempting to authoritarians - this is basically recreating feudalism with modern technology. But it is interesting that denying citizenship actually weakens the state, by creating a power & leadership vacuum that some other institution can step into.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Background
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Phyles
As part of the documentation they eventually required my father's birth certificate (since he surrendered his original passport). The city did manage to find his records even though he was born near the time of the partition/independence.
However, they required a letter from his birth parents who were long since deceased. They just didn't have the logic in their system to understand this was a possibility and know what to do.