The birth certificate is the most political and politicized public document issued by a government entity in the United States today. It is the "breeder document" that generates all other government and private documents of identity and entitlement. Since the government has positioned itself as the arbiter and creator of identity, bestowing upon each of us, the legitimacy of our existence, we cannot function in a "normal" way for long without it. What were once routine activities everyone could enjoy, are now mediated by a piece of government paper issueed to us its discretion..
For instance, without a government-approved birth certificate or documents engendered by it, a child can't enter school, attend camp, or even play Little League; adults can't marry, acquire security clearances, collect private and government pensions, access government programs, open a bank account, acquire employment, rent an apartment or buy a home, fly to Seattle or Fort Worth, enter certain public and private buildings, or legally drive a car. And certainly one cannot travel internationally, even to the once easily accessibly Canada and Mexico, without a passport or pass, which cannot be acquired without ...a birth certificate.
Starting April 1, 2011, the US Department of State
changed passport application regulations, making it more difficult to get one. (Please go to the link above for more details; those renewing a passport have it a little easier, but here are the general rules):
Passport applicants are required to present a certified birth certificate, the primary evidence of US citizenship.
The birth certificate must contain the full name of the applicant, the full name of the applicant's parent(s), date of birth, place of birth, raised seal, Registrar's signature, and the date the certificate was filed with the state Registrar's office. Except for the raised seal, these regulations endanger the ability of some
adoptees to access a passport--and as the escalating National Security State war against the American people continues, keep passports (and other government "services") out of the hands of Class Bastard all together.
The
unkept bastard--that is, the
adoptee--is in the unique situation of being issued, (with some exceptions), by state law, an allegedly legal, but fictive birth
certificate containing government-created false information including new names for child and parents, and depending on state practice and/or date of adoption, false birth date and place of birth for both parent and child. While these fictions are important and bode serious consequences to bastards, of most concern to bastards right now,
imo, is the codification of what has for some time, been documented practice,
the rejection of passport applications due to late filing with the Registrar. The late filing, of course, is due to the adoption itself, which the state hides,
Many amended birth certificates (ABCs) are "delayed filings" since, at least in the old days, an adoption could take more than a year to finalize; thus, a legal and permanent ABC could not be issued until an infant was a year or more older. (How this effects those adopted when older or out of fostercare, I have no idea). Moreover, some ABCs do not contain a Registrar's signature, only the name typed in. (I have two copies of my Ohio OBC , one from the state and the other from the county. The county cert is completely hand-written, and signed by the Registrar, and filed correctly; the State cert has a slightly different filing date and a typed "signature," My ABC contains the date of the OBC filing found on the hand-written cert, but the registrar's "signature" is typed.)
A birth certificate filed more than a year after the birth of a child is red flag for bulls in their passport office cubicles and your invitation to cancel your vacation to Brazil.
DOS has come up with some relief for those unfortunate enough to have a late filing date or other irregularity on their government generated and issued certificate of existence:
secondary evidence of US citizenship, generated by documents "generally not more than 5 years after birth." While these documents could be difficult for anyone to access, they are particularly difficult, if not impossible for Class Bastard to acquire, since the acquisition of most of these secondary papers would be a violation of state adoption laws and medical confidentiality laws, such as the federal
HIPAA.
Please hold your laughter to the end of this No-You-Can't-Have-That-Because-You're Adopted list.
Early Public Records:
- Baptismal certificate
- Hospital birth certificate
- Census record (The 1930 Census is the last publicly available census).
- Early school record
- Family Bible record
- Doctor's record of post-natal care.
Delayed birth certificates
You can submit a Delayed US Birth Certificate filed more than one year after birth, which MAY be acceptable IF:
It lists the documentation used to create it (preferably from public records)
and
It is signed by the birth attendant or lists an affidavit signed by the parents.
If all this fails, try the:
Birth Affidavit
You can present IN PERSON, a birth affidavit (Form DS-10,) It must be:
- notarized and submitted with early public records;
- completed by an affiant who has personal knowledge of birth in the US
- Must state briefly how the affiant's knowledge was acquired
- Should be completed by an older blood relative.
Oh wait, we're not done yet. If no older blood relative is available, it may be completed by the ATTENDING PHYSICIAN or any other person who has personal knowledge of your birth.
And, in case you're wondering, these documents are not sufficient proof of secondary evidence:
- voter registration card
- Army discharge papers
- Social Security card
Apparently nowadays, the government wants to hire you to kill people in far away countries only if you can prove US citizenship with appropriate documents. . Christina Crawford told me that her brother Christopher, a Viet Nam War vet, was denied a passport years later due to his hinky adoptive status.
IT YOU THINK THIS IS BAD, IT'S ABOUT TO GET WORSE.
The new form will require "some" applicants to submit:
- the full name, place of birth, date of birth, and citizenship status of your parents, step parents, siblings, and step siblings.
- your mother's residence one year before your birth; her residence at the time of your birth; and her residence a year after your birth.
- your mother's place of employment at the time of your birth; her dates of employment, name and address of employer. (Apparently, no one cares what your old man was up to.)
- mother's re-natal or post-natal medial care; name of doctor and dates of appointments.
- the circumstances of your birth (whatever that means), including the names, addresses and phone numbers, if available of those present or in attendance at your birth.
- religious or institutional records regarding your birth or events surrounding it (ex: baptism or circumcision)
- a list of all of your places of residence, and dates of residence from birth to present
- a list of all employers, address, dates employed, name of supervisor, and phone number
- all schools attended, addresses and dates of school attendance
Failure to reply "correctly" with any of these absurd questions, even with an "I don't know" can mean a rejected application (what's a little more rejection for adoptees?). What the dates of your mother's doctor's appointments or proof of your circumcision (hehheh) or who you mowed grass for 30 years ago has to do with your passport passport isn't addresses. What the state wants you to do is data mine yourself for its files.
Laughably, in its submitted
Statement of Support, the people at State who dreamed this up, claim that it will only take
45 minutes for applicants to gather up this information.The Identity Project,, which opposes the regs ,
points out realistically, that the applicant would be forced to spend 100 hours or more on the ap, and even then could not document all the information required. The complete Identity Project Comment (linked above), which also was submitted under the joint signatures of The Consumer Travel Alliance, the Center for Privacy and Human Rights, and several other organizations and individuals, is a detailed analysis and demolition of Proposed Forum DS 5513, and I urge you to read it and bookmark it.
I follow passport and ID news, but I'm not sure how I missed this absurd proposal until it was too late for Bastard Nation to submit comments, The Identity Project, in its comments, though, did include adoptees as a group that would be seriously harmed if these regs are implemented. Unfortunately, the comments did not address OBC and adoption decree access, but did put State on warming:
Certain groups would be even less likely than the norm to have any chance of completing the
proposed form. Adoptees who aren't in touch with their birth parents would have no chance of being able to provide the required information about their mother's residence, pre-natal medical appointments, or the circumstances of their birth.
*******
Of course, the State Department is performing more Security Theatre of the Absurd. Proposed Form DS 5513 (not to mention already-in-place adoptee-impossible identify regs), is the paper version of the naked body scanner and genital squeeze. One strips you of your clothing and dignity, the other of your right to travel internationally. .Both are meant to create the compliant citizen who is only too happy to sacrifice rights for the vague promise of security from something.. Today it's your passport...tomorrow. it's your...
Birth certificates as we know them today, are a product of the Progressive Era eugenics movement in the United States. Since their federal mandate a little over a hundred years ago, birth certificates, in the hands of the state have been used to eugenically erase/create/re-create racial, national, social, and family identity. They have been a tool to segregate races, control who marries whom, determine mental inadequacy, and hide children and parents from each other. See, Edwin Black's award wining epic account of eugenics:
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's campaign to create a master race. While Black doesn't address adoption in his book, he includes several pages on Virgina's first Registrar of Vital Records, Walter Ashby
Plecker and his manipulation of birth certificate data to erase and re-classify the racial identity of thousands of Virginians.against their will and sometimes without their knowledge. Plekcer was probably involved in all sorts of adoption shenanigans that we don't know about; but we do know that he once attempted to remove a set of twins from a Presbyterian orphanage because they were illegitimate and, therefore, the “chances are 10-1 they are of negro blood.” (A 2-part article from the
Virginian-Pilot here and
here, is a good place to start with Plecker.) The important connection between eugenics, adoption. and sealed records has been all but neglected. I wish I had time to delve into it.
About 15 years ago, a member of the Washington State ACLU Privacy Project told Bastard Nation that no one over the age of 18 needed a birth certificate. If a bill were introduced to seal the birth certificates of everybody, it would probably. support the measure.The email was sent several years before the events of 9/11 authorized the US government to wage its war on the American people and was clearly a snarky response to BN's criticism of its opposition to OBC access. The message was clear, though: the state can do what it wants with your identity and your documents.
Since then, we have seen the government's
secret non-consensual acquisition of the public's DNA, the creation of corporate
DNA patents (and brand new story
here) without the permission of the DNA owners (you and me), and a tightening of the public's access to local, state, and federal documents and meetings, all under the vil of "security" and "privacy.." Everyone's identities and information, are under the control of the corporate state, which professes to be instituting these illegal and unconstitutional acts for our own good. .Hidden histories, impounded and sealed records, bodily disenfranchisement once limited to lab ratted bastards, will soon be the norm for everyone. Rigid, nonsensical; (to us, but very sensical to the state) passport rules are part of the deal. They're testing the waters this time, will back off a little bit, and let the frogs boil..
I regret I haven't kept better records on the nightmare stories I've heard, particularity from adoptees, regarding their records and corpo mediation and control of them. A campus Young Republican couldn't get his driver's license due to "irregularities in his ABC. An EMT, with neither an OBC or an ABC, denied certification because his adoption involved three states; each state, "destroying" his paperwork because they thought the other state had it. An Army lifer and later civilian contractor, with security clearances from both jobs, denied Social Security because his birth certificate didn't trail back like it should. The continuing number of adoptees denied passports. Years ago, Bastard Nation-co-founder Shea Grimm, who had traveled internationally under an aparent passport as a child, was denied a big people's passport when she became an adult (though she finally did get it). Lately, stories of adoptees denied are growing. To make it more interesting, I heard casually, and don't have verification, that some states, get around this problem, by backdating the ABCs to make it coincide with new passport regulations. That is, ANOTHER fake document is created on top of the old fake document., The lies never end.
Last I heard, the original Real ID law--the national ID card law-- was in big trouble because states just couldn't or wouldn't implement it. In its stead other less expensive laws or less draconian parts of Real ID were being implemented or cajoled.. Whatever is going on isn't good for the American people and especially Class Bastard.
A couple years ago Bastard Nation began to implement what I call "Real ID language" into our legislative testimony, pointing out possible consequences of continued sealed records on adoptees: that go beyond the traditional rights infringement.
Tacking this year's birther idiocy for instance, we included this in our submitted testimony against Indiana SB 114:
Adopted adults, especially since 9/11, are increasingly denied
passports, drivers licenses, pensions, Social Security benefits,
professional certifications, and security clearances due discrepancies
on their amended birth certificates, and their inability to produce an
original birth certificate to answer the problems. Indiana is one of 11
states currently considering a law to require presidential and
vice-presidential candidates to present proof of citizenship through
birth certificates. Indiana's proposal, SB 114, sponsored by Sen. Mike
Delph and currently in the Elections Committee, requires that "a
certified copy of each nominee's birth certificate, including any other
documentation necessary to establish that the nominees
qualifications" to appear on the ballot.
Next year we'll beef it up.
No one lobbying for the restoration of adoptee rights to OBC access can afford to dismiss draconian federal mandates and penalties due to "irregular" birth certificates.. While we correctly argue the restoration of the right to access our
original birth certificates as a stand-alone right--and should continue
to do so-- we must also argue that the lack of the obc creates all kinds of scenarios for government abuse and the loss of more of our rights and
privileges. Lose one right and lose them all.
The birth certificate is the breeder document of all other documents of identification.Without a "correct" birth certificate, all other rights and privileges are in limbo. Bad BC? Sorry, no driver's license, no Social Security, no bank account. We're down to the wire on this. It's no longer a matter of one right--but every right. For us the OBC is the breeder document
