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Comment by lamasery | Hacker News Reader

We don't really have a standard way to definitively say "I am a citizen" in the US. It's all kinda ad-hoc, like most of the rest of our ID system. Closest thing's a birth certificate[EDIT: or naturalization papers, of course, for immigrants], I guess, but that's a pain in the ass for anyone who's had a name change (lots of married women, notably) because then they need more documents.

Having a social security or other tax-related ID has sufficed for banks so far, which doesn't guarantee the holder is a citizen but does demonstrate enough relevant "status" with the government for banking to probably go smoothly.

Digging ourselves deeper into our already awful decentralized partially-privatized (the CRAs, mostly) identification system by expanding the set of things we have to prove in even more circumstances is not a good thing.

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>We don't really have a standard way to definitively say "I am a citizen" in the US.

In most countries of the world, the best way to prove your citizenship is to apply for a visa. That is you world apply for a US visa and get an official rejection, because US citizens don't need/cannot get a visa, and the rejection document would be the proof of citizenship.

.. that seems extremely dangerous, because I wouldn't trust that refusal to not raise red flags for the rest of your life. I've not heard of people routinely doing this or announcing it as a valid method of proof of citizenship which they accept.

Agreed, that seems like exactly the thing that would get you pulled aside at the border, and/or give ICE a reason to not trust your American passport.

> Closest thing's a birth certificate[EDIT: or naturalization papers, of course, for immigrants], I guess, but that's a pain in the ass for anyone who's had a name change (lots of married women, notably) because then they need more documents.

Or a FS-240, Consular Report of Birth Abroad, from the State Department. I was born on a US military base and although I have a birth certificate, the only think I've ever been able to use it for was my REAL ID. I had to use the FS-240 for my passport, SSN, etc.

I needed my birth certificate to open my first bank account. Although that's because I was a minor.

I've opened several bank accounts for my child. All they needed was the social security number and my photo id (and maybe my social security number too).

You're trying to correlate events that are decades apart, in a thread where we're literally discussing a single administration's change in policy...

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