Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I'm a naturalised citizen.

I like to joke that I have more documenting showing my legal right to be in the US than my wife's grandmother. My wife's grandmother has a birth certificate but it is water damaged, illegible, and falling apart. Besides that she has no state ID (driver's license expired twenty years ago), and few other forms of identity.

Americans seem quite dead set against a national ID scheme (and associated database). The problem with that is that we wind up with a de-facto one, SSNs and social security cards being your main proof of who you are and your legal status. Birth certificates are problematic because they've never been standardised, and have no real fraud mitigation mechanisms (e.g. watermarks). Certainly my daughter's US birth certificate would be trivial to duplicate.

This is in no small part why I ordered my daughter a US passport even before it was needed. It is one of the best forms of ID and citizenship proof you can have, even if it expires you remain in the database indefinitely. It is also why I ordered myself a US passport-card, so I have proof of citizenship in my wallet at all times.

ICE, interior immigration checkpoints, and other initiatives seem to be on the rise. Even legal immigrants and US citizens need to protect yourselves, particularly if you're more likely to be profiled due to race.

The bit about birth certificates isnt all true - mine is from California, its on intaglio paper, with watermarks, and embossing - that particular paper (a certified long form) would be hard to copy.

I had one like that. Nowadays they issue replacements on much plainer paper that goes through a laser printer. It's notarized, but nothing about it would be difficult to counterfeit.

The certificate isn't the proof. Cross-referencing it with a Country Registrar's computerized records is.

You could be like a familial relation of mine, who didn't have a social security card, driver's license, or birth certificate. He lost them a long time ago.

Birth certificate was impossible to replace because the courthouse or whatever burned down before the records were computerized.

You can't get a social security card without a driver's license, and vice versa. He literally had tried almost everything.

In the end another family member photoshopped a social security card so he could get a driver's license, which he used to get an actual social security card.

The whole system is stupid as hell. It's easier to navigate if you lie than if you act truthfully.

Well, right, it's not even a unique document. Multiple, equally valid birth certificates can exist. As a form of ID, it's not great.

A passport or drivers license is much better because the issuer put a picture on it and already did the checking to make sure the birth certificate and social security card were valid.

I got a few copies of my daughter's (California) birth certificate a few months ago and it was printed with a laser printer. But: the border of the papers were intaglio printed, each certificate has a unique barcode, and was embossed. You could counterfeit it but it seems like a fair amount of work and would have issues with the unique ID on each one.

Yeah, this is what I have as well, mine is over a decade old however.

Depends on where you get it. My replacement is laser printed and notarized on very fancy certificate paper (California).

I think you may have gotten a replacement when CA was short on the correct paper.

http://www.ocregister.com/2015/11/25/paper-shortage-puts-bir...

You're right, but so is OP because you had to write "isn't all true."

My perfectly valid, accepted by the State Department for a passport and by a federal agency for a rather intensive background check, birth certificate was issued by what was then a tiny town in north Texas, just after that city had gotten large enough to have its own birth registry. It is hand-typed and has a raised seal that is now mostly flat due to age. It doesn't even have a unique identifier. It says it is recorded in "book 2, page 19" and there are three other birth entries on that same page. I got to see the original book when I went asking about it out of curiosity.

The only not-on-paper copy of it is on a microfiche roll at the new city hall. I've checked; they've not yet gotten around to digitizing records from my year of birth. Consequently, I can't order a copy of my birth certificate electronically from out-of-state. I have to mail in a paper form. The copy I get back is fantastically secure: microprinting, holographic seals, and a QR code unique ID. But the original, which is still good for everything, has none of those.

Maybe new birth certificates are standard but there are literally dozens of us who are still in our prime working years of life that have "proof of birth" paperwork that can be fabricated by anyone who knows how to type.

I think the parent is stating that it's simply very inconsistent and not standardized. I can anecdotally tell you that my birth certificate would be trivial to forge or duplicate as it lacks all features you just described, and was produced in the last decade.

> I like to joke that I have more documenting showing my legal right to be in the US than my wife's grandmother.

You are mistaken. Your wife's grandmother ( assuming she is native born ), even though she may not have "papers", is undeportable. Whereas you have legal documents showing that you are not a a native born citizen. You are someone that we can deport. Naturalized citizens can be deported from the US. A native born american cannot.

> Americans seem quite dead set against a national ID scheme (and associated database).

There really is no need. Most americans have state IDs and if they want to travel abroad, US passports.

> ICE, interior immigration checkpoints, and other initiatives seem to be on the rise.

But for american born citizens, that isn't a worry. It's a worry for immigrants - legal or illegal. Not for native born citizens.

> ( assuming she is native born )

That's the key point. How do you prove this if your documents are shoddy?

> "Naturalized citizens can be deported from the US."

Naturalized citizens cannot be deported unless the government first proves in an Article III Federal Court that they obtained citizenship fraudulently and the court revokes their citizenship.

Source: https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual/Print/PolicyManual-Volume...

> "Most americans have state IDs"

State IDs don't prove citizenship. IDs from States that don't comply with the REAL ID Act don't even necessarily prove legal presence.

> "But for american born citizens, that isn't a worry. It's a worry for immigrants - legal or illegal. Not for native born citizens."

Why would it be reasonable to have a system that "worries" legal immigrants? Should legal immigrants, especially naturalized American citizens, be harassed by the government?

"State IDS don't prove citizenship."

Nope. Back in the 1970s when I had medium-long hair (cut every four or five months) a bored INS guy in Detroit passed a couple of minutes asking me to establish my right to enter the US. The driver's license didn't prove anything, nor in his opinion did the draft card. At that point I just shrugged and he waved me through.

> Naturalized citizens cannot be deported unless the government first proves in an Article III Federal Court that they obtained citizenship fraudulently and the court revokes their citizenship.

So naturalized citizens can be deported whereas a natural born american citizen cannot.

> Should legal immigrants, especially naturalized American citizens, be harassed by the government?

Don't remember saying they should.

> "So naturalized citizens can be deported whereas a natural born american citizen cannot."

That's misleading.

A "naturalized citizen" who is proven to have fraudulently obtained citizenship, and therefore deportable, is considered to never have legally become a citizen in the first place. So this person would only have been a pretend "naturalized citizen" on the surface, and by the time they are deported they are not considered to be a naturalized citizen.

A real naturalized citizen, who legitimately obtained citizenship, cannot be deported against their will, no matter what they do after becoming a citizen.

So a naturalized citizen cannot be deported. A person who pretends to be a legally naturalized citizen but really isn't, can.

This is all in contrast to non-citizen immigrants, such as green card holding permanent residents, who can be deported for "aggravated felonies" as well as other specified reasons.

> "Don't remember saying they should."

I read it that way, but if that was not your intent then OK.

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