Can you prove you're a citizen?

[sunnyskywalker]

Yikes.

If a baptismal record and school records aren't good enough, how exactly are you supposed to prove you're a citizen when your birth certificate's authenticity is in doubt due to geography? People with immigrant parents won't have their parents' US school records, because duh, immigrant parents! Poor people often won't have prenatal care, and thus no prenatal care records from a US hospital. As for birth announcements in local papers - people still do that? Seriously? How much does that cost, anyway?

And then there's the midwife aspect. Okay, if midwives in that region in the '90s forged 15,000 birth certificates, I can see why the State Department is wary of birth certificates from around there. But what are you going to do? Force every woman to give birth in a hospital, regardless of her preference or (lack of) health insurance etc.? And what are people already born at home with a midwife supposed to do? Especially if the midwife has died in the intervening decades?

I understand that it's a lot simpler if you know who is and isn't a citizen, for record-keeping if nothing else, but lots of legitimate citizens don't have the documentation the State Department would like. So this is not a good way to sort out who's in which category. (Heck, two of my grandparents wouldn't qualify as "proven" citizens either. Born at home without even a midwife present, immigrant parents, and no birth certificate for years after the fact.) If it doesn't do the job and harasses law-abiding people, what's the point? Not to mention, you would think that the SD would have to have a substantial reason to question a birth certificate's authenticity - "you're from a sketchy region and your mama's poor" doesn't seem all that substantial.

Comments

[owl]

Do births in the US not need to be registered with any central authority. Here, you have to register the birth within a certain time frame, and you get one copy of the certificate and the Register of Births keeps the other.

[sunnyskywalker]

...you know, I have no idea. I asked my parents, and they don't either. We think we must have to report births to someone, but have no idea which agency. (I was born in a hospital, so it didn't come up.) I tried Googling "central birth registry united states" and came up with a bunch of pages for individual states' vital records offices. So my guess would be that each state's Department of Health is the place that keeps track of births. This actually kind of makes sense - things are usually moving toward more federal oversight, but the individual states still handle a bunch of things on their own here. I think N. Ireland is not divided up as much? (ETA: I mean, I know it's not divided into 50 states or anything, but I mean, I think it's not as compartmentalized in general.)

Back in, say, the 1930s, though, I don't think there was any organized agency to look after that. It was common for people in rural areas to have their kids at home and get birth certificates when they got to town next, or when the kids saw a doctor, or whenever they got around to it - if ever. At least, i have heard from rural-raised people that age that this was the case. I suspect that a lot of people born at home in remote areas still might not get birth certificates right away.

[owl]

I think N. Ireland is not divided up as much? (ETA: I mean, I know it's not divided into 50 states or anything, but I mean, I think it's not as compartmentalized in general.)

Hah! No, NI has 6 counties and a population of somewhat less than 2 million, it doesn't make sense to subdivide it much. We have 20-odd local councils and that's it for local government and subdivisions. There are three General Register Offices in the UK: England + Wales, Scotland, and NI.

It has been compulsory to register births, deaths and marriages with the GRO since 1864 in NI. A lot of Ireland's public records pre-dating 1900 were destroyed in a fire in 1922, but that wouldn't be an issue for anyone currently living, I should think.

[sunnyskywalker]

Ah, that would make it easier to count. The size, I mean - obviously a lot of other factors can hold things up.

I imagine the US feds in 1864 wouldn't want to try galloping all across the Midwest trying to make sure every birth and death got recorded, and since the settlers in that area were pretty spread out, it would have been hard to set up any kind of "central" office for a region. The system growing up in a hodge-podge of little local registries (including churches - I think a baptismal certificate was as good as a birth certificate for most things until at least the 1930s) would make more sense. I'll have to remember size and population when trying to figure out whether the government in a fantasy or sf novel makes sense or not...

[fialleril.livejournal.com]

*sighs*

It's kind of amazing how much the State Department is doing without any substantial reason these days...

[sunnyskywalker]

It's so obvious that this method can't reliably distinguish between "citizen" and "non-citizen." What a waste of money and time.

Interestingly, I just finished reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, also featuring useless security measures. Only that book has a lot fewer lawyers and well-meaning civil servants with who probably just didn't think things through and interrogate their biases, and a lot more teenagers being l33t and holding rock concerts against The Man (who is clearly Evil when you meet her).

[fialleril.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I doubt they've really considered it in such logical terms. It seems like more of a knee-jerk reaction out of fear than anything.

So I clicked your link and the first endorsement for that book was by Neil Gaiman. Which tends to be a Bad Sign in my recent experience. Is it good in spite of that, though?

[sunnyskywalker]

My guess is that after someone discovered the false birth certificates, they panicked and slapped on some half-baked measures in response, and now they're running into the problems from that.

Hmm. It's an interesting book, but I haven't decided whether I like it or not yet. It's the kind of book that sweeps you up while you're reading it, getting you into that "yeah, rebel! fight The Man!" mode, but... I don't know. Some parts seemed too neatly set up to make a point, and too simplistic - like, the dad is a normal citizen who thinks the new security measures are a pain but necessary, then has an immediate reversal later once he gets some new information. And all the DHS people seem sadistic to me - where are the ones who might have qualms but force themselves to go on because they believe it's necessary? Surely there must be one. (I mean, I have no idea about real life DHS people, but I have a hard time believing they're all one particular way while reading about it.) But I loved the sense of place in the book - I recognized the San Francisco I've seen (especially the part about knowing who the tourists are because they're freezing in shorts and t-shirts because they thought California was universally warm. Hee!) And the main character's friends have good reasons for signing up with him or not, and they're all understandable and sympathetic. I don't know, maybe it's just that I find a teenage boy's head an alien place to be.

Neil Gaiman is hit and miss. He has some great short stories, and usually seems more aware of issues than other authors, but then he has slip-ups and blind spots too. So I take him on a case-by-case basis for now.

[plasticinecupid.livejournal.com]

Jeebus. It's terrifying to realize how much can depend on a slip of paper or a few bytes of info. I'm starting to feel a little anxious about the fact that I still have a passport pending.

Sorry I haven't commented recently. I was checking my friends list regularly and hoping to catch a post from you, but none showed. Finally I visited your blog page and realized that there are gremlins in my Livejournal account. WTF? I hadn't touched the "Manage Friends" settings to exclude any of my friends from the list. Somehow your blog hadn't been syndicated along with the others. Now I'm enjoying catching up on your posts!

[sunnyskywalker]

Darn those gremlins! They're in ur journal, breakin ur flist. Glad to hear from you - I was actually just about to email and ask how you're doing. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for summer to be over. And I never thought I'd say that...

Love the icon, btw.

[owl]

With the mini-menu that pops ups when you hover over the info head icon, it's easy to defriend (or friend!) someone accidentally.

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

Talk about kafkaesque... they won't even ever rule he's not a citizen, they'll just hold up his passport until he gets enough proof for them... you'd think they'd need some sort of proof that something dodgy is going on before they start screwing around with people like that.

[sunnyskywalker]

You would think. I mean, it's one thing to have some actual evidence that someone may not be a citizen and check it out, and quite another to say, "Hmm, some of your neighbors might have fake birth certificates, so we're going to assume you might too!"