Kansas woman told birth certificate wasn't enough to prove citizenship for passport

[iluvtennis]

@sarahkendzior, 18h18 hours ago

Kansas woman told birth certificate wasn’t enough to prove citizenship for passport https://www.kctv5.com/news/kansas-woman-told-birth-certificate-wasn-t-enough-to-prove/article_144c19aa-b50f-11e8-94f5-6b921312a97a.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share … <-- Part of disturbing, increasing pattern of passport refusal for US citizens, with a twist -- the government asked for her "family bible" as proof of citizenship

Link to tweet

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So, the Trump administration gets to say whether your birth certificate is valid or not. This is unacceptable and has to stop.

[Doreen]

1. How does a family bible prove citizenship?

I guess I will never get out of the States because my family does not have a family bible. I am also not Christian.

[jmowreader]

4. In the old days, people recorded births and deaths in them

And the state accepted it as proof of those events happening.

In 2018, demanding a family bible as a vital record is highly illegal.

[lastlib]

9. Would a family Quran be acceptable?

Asking for a friend......

[jmowreader]

11. I don't think so

The important part is the family records section, which - in the era when family bibles served as birth certificates - all family bibles had.

I am under the impression it is a very serious sin to write anything in a Quran, so they couldn’t be used for this.

[DFW]

2. I hope she has this in writing

This is SO illegal as to warrant national and international scrutiny (and a multi-million dollar lawsuit due to denial of civil rights) if it went down as described.

But this is SO far off the deep end, some corroboration would be needed.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

3. Under Trump, naturalized citizens may not be citizens, and now citizens may not be citizens.

He just wants to get rid of everyone so he and Ivanka can have the whole country to themselves.

[ancianita]

5. This is Naziism. Hitlerian. Darkness descends on guarantees of birth citizenship, life, liberty...

This is worse than unacceptable.

This country is an ugly place without constitutional birthright. It becomes a political, class and gender war jungle.

[iluvtennis]

10. +++ Agree.

[Cryptoad]

6. And all this time yall thought,,,,,

the Wall they want to build was for keeping people out,,,,,!

[rpannier]

7. Sounds like some nut job in Houston needs to get kicked to the street

You can tell it was a serious cluster because after contacting Sen Moran's office, the passport came pretty quickly.

[WePurrsevere]

8. The farmhouse birth probably flagged it. Here's more info from gov site and yes...

a family Bible is listed as one of the choices which seems odd for the times but it was 'the' record keeper for many until not all that long ago. While I love to go after Trump and his incompetent admin too, I'm going to guess that this has probably been on the list for decades as one form of proof when combined with other documentation. Why some idiot emphasized it as a choice however is beyond me.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/requirements/citizenship-evidence.html

I looked into getting a passport but went with the NY Enhanced Drivers License since it was cheaper and would serve to get me across the Canadian/US border which is good enough for now. As an adoptee I was a bit concerned about my birth certificate being the 'right kind' since a few other adoptees have mentioned they had to jump through hoops and even being turned done because there's wasn't.

[moriah]

12. Unless it was a delayed birth record, they shouldn't do this per procedure.

Unless they are deciding in order to implement the discriminatory attacks against border home births they must also do the same to everyone not born in a hospital....

In which case, please, continue! You will alienate all the home birth, home school, anti-government whackos who are terrified of Democrats so voted for Trump. The more like that who stay home, the better.

[WePurrsevere]

14. Not disagreeing that it's ridiculous. Merely stating a possible reason and...

link to what the US requirements are to get a passport which include a family Bible as one of a few options.

[moriah]

15. Yes, but only for a delayed birth certificate.

U.S. birth certificate that meets the following requirements:
Issued by the city, county, or state of birth
Lists applicant’s full name, date of birth, and place of birth
Lists parent(s)’ full names
Has the signature of the city, county, or state registrar
Has the date filed with registrar's office (must be within one year of birth)
Has the seal of issuing authority

Bolding mine.

As I said, unless because it went through the Houston office and that's been the main office dealing with the blowback from the border state passport denials so they went ahead and are asking for secondary records of *all* non-hospital births, or have implemented a "random check" strategy instead with non-institutional births....

As the article said:

According to the federal website, there is no policy stating a birth certificate must come from a hospital or other official institution.

This isn't technically how things are supposed to work, but if they're going to do it to everyone not born in a hospital, I'd love to see how that bites them.

[WePurrsevere]

18. Yes, I had read that. It's possible they're doing random checks...

and if so I truly hope that it does bite them.

OTOH it could be a typical gov SNAFU and whoever made the decision to reject her application didn't know how to deal with a home birth or misunderstood.

Is the rate for passport applications of U.S. citizens being rejected for BS reasons up? One person could possibly be a mess up. If we see it happening with some regularity however that's policy and we need to take action to put a stop to it.

[NewJeffCT]

13. The most religious book in my house

is probably the Deities & Demigods book from TSR/Wizards of the Coast. I'd be SOL producing a Bible, Torah, Koran or anything else.

For those that don't know, Deities & Demigods is a supplemental book for use with Dungeons & Dragons, the role playing game. It describes various ancient, dark ages, medieval and fantasy pantheons of deities for use in your D&D game - the Norse (Thor, Odin, etc), the Romans (Jupiter, Minerva, etc) , the and the Greeks (Athena, Zeus, Apollo, etc), as well as Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Egyptian and some famous fantasy pantheons (Cthulhu is probably the best known, but also the gods of the Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc)

[Blue_Tires]

16. Evidently this is what Kansas wants, since they voted for it

[sakabatou]

17. WTF?!