Can you prove you're a citizen?
Aug. 11th, 2008 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerYikes.
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.
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.
