Proof of citizenship

[fmdaddio]

How many of you can readily produce proof that they are an American citizen? I went without a birth certificate for over ten years. Got a new one when I started the process of adoption. I used a service that cost about 5 or 10 dollars. It appears our right to vote means less than the right to own firearms. Very indicative of the screwed up priorities of so many of people in this country. Sad.

[SoCalNative]

1. I have a valid passport

and my birth certificate in a strongbox. I know everyone doesn't have these easily available, though.

[meadowlander]

2. I think for many Americans "produce your papers" is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

It's not a question of priorities. It's a fundamental cultural dislike of the government sticking its nose in your business without a good reason.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. The harsh reality one is,

for a woman who changes her name via Marriage. Ran into this last week when my spouse renewed her Drivers License and Appling for the special TSA clearance provision . She had birth certificate,her maiden name,okay,name change becomes a issue. You have to have your marriage License original copy ,wow,fifty five years later,we have copies,but in order to get a original copy,she has to return to Polk County Wisconsin and apply for a Copy of the Original on file with the County. Can not order it via Phone or e-mail. Have to apply in person with three forms of I.D..

Sneaky. It is easier to get Passports at the Post Office.

[TheDebbieDee]

9. Passports cost $110 ages 16 & up...

Processing takes 6-8 weeks. There's a $60 expedite fee...

Just some info for those thinking about taking this route...

[Wellstone ruled]

10. Yup,

going to spring for new ones next week,will be going across into Canada this Summer.

[GP6971]

31. I received my renewal passport

in less than 3 weeks. Of course that was back in October before the BS shutdowns.

[KPN]

32. And they expire after 10 years not to mention

the cost of the passport photo (separate from the fee). Economic discrimination?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

14. What's so appalling about that is that

it used to be when a woman got married and took her husband's surname, no one cared. All she had to do was notify her DMV and Social Security and that was it. I don't think she didn't even have to prove she'd married the guy. Just change her name.

I will say that I am beyond glad that I never changed my name when I was married.

Also, if a person is the tiniest bit inconsistent about how her (or his) name is used or shows up on various documents, it can create a huge nightmare. Like some of your stuff says Elizabeth Smith, other stuff says Betty Smith. Likewise Robert/Bob. Or any other common nickname. Officialdom will decide it can't possibly know you are the same person even though every piece of ID has the same address, no matter what the first name is. Again, I'm referring to common nicknames, not a discrepancy like (I'm making this up) Some stuff says John Robert, other stuff says Bob.

My very first full time job was working for a credit bureau. This was in 1966, and it made me incredibly sensitive to names and how important it was to get them right on our part, and for the named person to be consistent. It also made me utterly opposed to naming a child Jr, or worse yet the III, IV, or any other roman numeral. Give the kid his or her own name.

[Wellstone ruled]

15. When you mentioned Credit bureau,

had a friend who worked at one in MPLS,she too mentioned the grief you state.

My Spouse had a issue with the spelling of her first name on her Drivers License,it took a relocation to another State and Appling for a new License in that State to change the forty year mistake .

Like I mentioned,it is easier to pull passports than get a TSA clearance in Nevada. This is what happens when the Tea Party had control of our State. Our DMV workers are just livid with the Name Change issue.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. I live in New Mexico

which has switched to a Real ID license or a permit to drive. Even the simple permit to drive involves a ludicrous amount of documentation. Recently the former mayor of this city was denied a license renewal because he was lacking something or another, despite the fact that the staff there recognized him. They also seem to demand to see the Social Security card, which is essentially illegal. My SS card states very clearly: Not to be used for identification purposes, and I've written a letter to the editor about this.

[Wellstone ruled]

25. I know the grief with the SS Card.

Mine was issued in 1949 and it is a paper type which can not be used as a Identifier in Utah or Nevada. You must have a Plastic Covered new version. Well that is not going to work,I have the original embossed Hospital Birth Cert. To obtain a new version of SS Card,I need to return to Wisconsin and the County were I was born and pay 50 bucks for a new Birth Cert at the County Clerks Office in person. Oh,BTW,have to have three forms of ID's.

The real ID Drivers license was a great idea,but, the Politicians really Koch Brothered it to hell and back.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

27. You should be able to get a new SS card just by going to the local

Social Security office and showing normal proof of ID.

A decade or so ago I'd misplaced my original and went trotting off to my local office and got a replacement. Actually, I no longer know where the replacement is, but the original resurfaced. They allow you something like three new SS cards in a lifetime. Although that replacement wasn't embossed. Anyway, I would hope that simple procedure would still hold.

When I got my first Medicare card I went to Staples and had it laminated, because I knew it would be something I'd be likely pulling out a lot. I understand they're in the process of re-issuing all Medicare cards so that our full SS number is no longer on it.

In any case, I will not use my full SS number as ID. I really hate it that certain organizations want even the last 4. I should probably invent a different number to give out on those occasions, but I haven't yet. Hmmm. Maybe I could use the pin number I use at my bank. It's four digits. Whose to say it's not the last four of a SS?

[Wellstone ruled]

30. Going to give it try,it is only ten blocks away.

Like I said,easier to get a Pass- Port than the Real ID Drivers License. What the heck.

[EllieBC]

4. I have a passport and birth certificate for the US. For Canada

I have my Permanent Resident card and document.

My kids all have passports for both countries and their Canadian birth certificates.

[CreekDog]

28. So how much do those documents cost? US birth certificates and passports for a family of 4...

probably cost about $600.

[EllieBC]

39. Passports here are 5 or 10 year. And kids cost less.

They don't need passports because we always drive to the US to fly and driving over the land border their birth certificates are sufficient as they are all young still. I wanted passports just as an extra layer.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. In reality, most people probably can, because they have

a birth certificate or can easily get one.

Many years ago I needed to get an original birth certificate from the state of New York when I went to work for the telephone company. Yeah, Ma Bell used to require that. I held on to it for many years, and it was the one I used when I got my first passport. All subsequent passports have been renewed by turning in the old one and getting a new one.

When I recently applied for Social Security I needed a birth certificate. The first one had long since crumbled away. This time what I got from NYS was not a photocopy of the original but the short form thing. Darn.

Yes, I know there are people out there who might not have a birth certificate, but that's increasingly less common. However, if you were born recently enough that the census records have been released, that can work.

My mother was born at home in 1916 and a birth certificate was not ever filed for her, but back when she was getting a passport the passport office was happy to let her use her baptismal certificate as proof of citizenship.

There are extreme religious groups that do not report the births of their children to the civil authorities, and if those kids leave the cult they are in very bad straights because they have no records of any kind. States do need to be sensitive to those situations and be willing to set up records for them.

[sarcasmo]

12. We don't travel the U.S. with our brith certificates, guess that is gonna have to change now. UGH!

[Xipe Totec]

6. My birth certificate would be useless for this

Since it says I was born in Mexico (US citizen born abroad).

However I do have a certificate of citizenship, and a passport.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Does your birth certificate actually say

US citizen born abroad? If so, it's proof of citizenship.

[Xipe Totec]

16. Nope. Why would the Mexican government do that?

And why would the US government take that at face value? If so, then the Mexican government would effectively have the power to make anyone a US citizen.

It says who my parents are. That, and my father's proof of citizenship, presented to US INS before my 17th birthday was sufficient to receive my certificate of citizenship from the US retroactive to birth.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

19. Thank you for clarifying that, because I somehow managed to think

that's what it said. And I'm very glad that you got it straightened out.

[Xipe Totec]

20. I see where I might have misled you

The parenthetical expression explaining that I was a US citizen born abroad was just that, an explanation not a quote of what was written in the birth certificate.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. Gotcha.

Did being born in Mexico entitle you to Mexican citizenship?

I never thought too much about Americans born abroad, as you were. I was born in this country, was able to get copies of my birth certificate as needed, and never had any issues with my name.

I will also say this about names. Here in New Mexico there are, understandably, lots of people from Mexico, or their parents or grandparents are the ones who came here. Because their naming traditions are slightly different from what I'm used to, it can cause a lot of confusion. The usual rule is a first name, father's surname, then mother's surname. When a woman marries she might or might not add her husbands surname to the mix. Nicknames are very common and are not necessarily obvious to us Anglos.

When I worked the information desk at the local hospital, I often had to play twenty questions with visitors to locate the person they wanted to visit. I got good at that.

[Xipe Totec]

23. Yes it did

Though I lost my Mexican citizenship when I became a US citizen, the laws in Mexico have since changed such that I can now reclaim my Mexican citizenship without losing my US citizenship. I just have to go to the Mexican consulate, here in the US, apply for my Mexican citizenship and present the previously mentioned birth certificate.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

36. I of course have no idea how you feel about this,

but if I had that opportunity, I would personally take advantage of having dual citizenship.

[Xipe Totec]

41. It's just procrasti-nation

[DFW]

34. Both my daughters were born in Germany to a German mother

Within a few weeks of each, I went down to the American embassy and got their passports, Social Security numbers, and their U.S. birth certificates ("Birth of a U.S. citizen abroad&quot . The whole thing took me less than an hour from start to finish, including filling out the paperwork. I had called ahead, asked what they needed, brought it all with me, and was done in a snap. I suspect that today, it would require days or even weeks of preparation, getting an appointment, etc.

We'll find out soon enough, anyway. One of my daughters is pregnant, and she intends to do the same when the baby is born, presumably at the end of May, near Frankfurt. The one thing that probably has NOT changed is the "Birth of a U.S. citizen abroad" birth certificate.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

35. Thank you.

I need to ask my sister about her two children who were born in Germany. She was married to an American service man stationed there. I rather suspect the Army was very good about making sure kids born their to service men and women got all the right paperwork from the beginning.

[DFW]

40. Military is a whole other species

They do take care of their own, and they love nothing if not their paperwork.

I am a civilian (always was) with a German wife, so I had to do the whole thing myself. It sounded daunting at the time, but the Embassy staff, once they saw I provided everything they told me to furnish, was very helpful. I walked in with the paperwork, and walked out with their birth certificates, passports and Social Security numbers both times.

Of course, this was the 1980s, and the embassy was still in Bonn.

Now that my daughter will go through it all 33 years after I did it for her, we'll see if it goes as smoothly. Apparently the US consulate in Frankfurt is equipped to do this (the consulate in Düsseldorf is way too small, and can't). I just hope the fact that my daughter is a dual citizen doesn't make them balk at giving her child US citizenship. I also hope so for the sake of the US personnel dealing with her. She is the youngest partner in a big international law firm, and is not used to losing arguments. This is not because she yells and screams better than anyone else, but rather because she is always better prepared than anyone else. If the consulate staff tells her that her paperwork is not in order, they had better be prepared to find out why they are wrong.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

43. Her having dual citizenship ought not to matter.

In fact, I would think that the consulate wouldn't need to be informed of that. Just show proof of her own U.S. citizenship.

[DFW]

45. It SHOULDN'T matter

In the age of Trump, who knows? I assume their German citizenship is registered in some computer anyway.

Everything else seems to be these days.

However, she does have her US birth certificate AND her US passport. If they give her grief in spite of those, they will be in for some grief themselves.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

47. It's really not the age of Trump here.

It's the entire post 9-11 bullshit.

[FarCenter]

7. It is odd that a birth certificate can be used as proof of citizenship

All it says is that a person with a certain name was born to others with certain names at some place and time.

There are no biometric identifiers, such as fingerprints, DNA, retinal scans, etc. that tie it to an actual mature adult person.

It is only one input to the security clearance process which does a background investigation to establish the continuous existence of that person from birth until the present.

[Xipe Totec]

17. Well, they are issued by entities that have bona fides

There's a big brouhaha in South Texas about midwives who began selling birth certificates to people actually born in Mexico. Eventually the midwives were caught, arrested and convicted. Then all the people who had birth certificates from those midwives had to present other evidence that the child was actually born in the US; witness interviews with all the people who were present at the birth, photo evidence if any, etc. Some people were not able to present sufficient evidence and they lost their citizenship and were shipped back to Mexico.

[KPN]

33. Yeah, didn't work for Obama.

[Abnredleg]

8. I just got my Real ID driver's license

I had to prove citizenship to get it (you have to provide either a passport or birth certificate) so now I have proof with me at all times.

[sarcasmo]

11. My birth certificate is in our safe. I only travel with a drivers license. ICE is the new Gestapo.

[GoneOffShore]

22. Valid passport - and a copy of my birth certificate.

Plus I keep a copy of my passport in my wallet.

[Demovictory9]

37. me too but passports are pricey

[GoneOffShore]

38. $110 for a 10 year passport.

Pretty good value.

[Skittles]

24. I just use my passport

[oasis]

26. Wake up America!

Please wake up.

[brooklynite]

29. I've had a Passport since I was 10...and I have a DHS Global Entry Card

[MineralMan]

42. I can. I have a valid passport,

my original birth certificate and a certified copy of it, too. I have my original Social Security card, issued in 1961. I have my state driver's licence for identification beyond that. I have property tax records to demonstrate my residence.

All of those, except the driver's licence are in a fireproof lockbox, and can be in my hand in less than two minutes if I am at home.

[meow2u3]

44. I have a certified copy of my birth certificate

Got my copy 2 1/2 years ago when I applied for subsidized 55+ housing. I needed that as proof of age.

No, it's not the long form.

[Agschmid]

46. I have the trifecta ready to go...

Passport, SSC, BC