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Comment by abnry | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>>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.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-is-deny...

It's kind of like needing to have your post to Hacker News be sufficiently upvoted to get you Google account reinstated, no?

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.

This is the second denied passport story I’ve seen recently. The first one was here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/the_americas/us...

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?

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