I didn’t expect better from the NY post, but it’s leaving out some critical detail. His father is (Was? Also not mentioned) a natural-born US citizen. This is sufficient to gain citizenship, even if born abroad. Is this a clerical error? Does SSA not recognize their parentage? How did they previously pass all of the other tests of citizenship, and why is it different with the SSA?
It was mentioned, father is dead. He was born during the rule period for babies from 1952 to 1986. You only got US citizenship to an American parent if the parent lived in the USA for 10 years BEFORE the child was born. Otherwise, it doesn’t count. Or of course child born in the USA. But this guy was born in Canada. He missed the window to apply for citizenship before he was 18.
So he doesn’t get it. That simple.
What he’s trying to do is prove his dad lived in the US for 10 years before he was born, but that’s difficult to do with a dead parent as those are not records that are usually kept. For example how many paystubs do you have of your grandparents from the 1940’s? None most likely.
They never passed previous tests of citizenship. They just claimed to be a citizen and the different US systems weren’t linked so he was never caught. Now they are linked. And he was caught.
Probably what happened was that he was born in Canada with an American parent who was unaware that he had to go through the process of reporting the birth to the embassy and obtaining US citizenship, and then they just moved to the US and he lived his life just thinking his father had done this and he had obtained citizneship…
NOw, I have no idea about the social security information he was using and the card… But it could have been something crazy like his dad one day said “Oh shit, I better go get his social security card,” and this would have been in the 1960s or 1970s, perhaps in some backwoods in the US, and some guy at the office didn’t feel like doing his job or was just not very astute and he issued a social security card for a non-citizen illegitimately… Or there are potentially other scenarios, who knows. It used to be the case that some wallet company actually printed a couple fake cards that they would stick into wallets, and every year thousands of Americans would just write that fake number down as their own SSN.
That is my guess as to how he was paying taxes, etc., all this time.
There could also be other ways that he fell through bureaucratic cracks.
There are occasionally cases in my country where a child is born out of wedlock (this is a relevant detail) to a foreign woman whose husband is unknown or refuses paternity and she is incapable of acquiring citizenship for the child in her own country or she is unwilling to try because it is a criminal or higly indicting act, and then over here we do not recognize the birth of foreign children as giving them citizenship in our nation… So we actually end up with a completely nationless child, and then a sticky situation is presented: do we attempt to get this woman to obtain citizenship for her in her own country when she faces legal repercussions or the country can even just simply refuse to recognize it because citizenship is passed through the father?
Sometimes nothing is done because the child can be given an identity via permanent residency which automatically converts to citizenship after high school - I think this is what often happens…
Another fun note: Our government offices were not directly connected with hospitals, and so hospitals used to issue only a live birth document… Some parents would not turn these into government offices, which resulted in there being ghost children that officially did not exist.
Sometimes this was completely rectified when, one day, it was time for the kid to go to school, and they’d get the kid citizenship… But sometimes, for insane reasons, they would simply have the kid not to go to school and persist as legally non-existent.
You can also imagine how dozens of infanticides were discovered, as well a couple dozen abuse cases, after they made the move to close this loophole.
I didn’t expect better from the NY post, but it’s leaving out some critical detail. His father is (Was? Also not mentioned) a natural-born US citizen. This is sufficient to gain citizenship, even if born abroad. Is this a clerical error? Does SSA not recognize their parentage? How did they previously pass all of the other tests of citizenship, and why is it different with the SSA?
It was mentioned, father is dead. He was born during the rule period for babies from 1952 to 1986. You only got US citizenship to an American parent if the parent lived in the USA for 10 years BEFORE the child was born. Otherwise, it doesn’t count. Or of course child born in the USA. But this guy was born in Canada. He missed the window to apply for citizenship before he was 18.
So he doesn’t get it. That simple.
What he’s trying to do is prove his dad lived in the US for 10 years before he was born, but that’s difficult to do with a dead parent as those are not records that are usually kept. For example how many paystubs do you have of your grandparents from the 1940’s? None most likely.
They never passed previous tests of citizenship. They just claimed to be a citizen and the different US systems weren’t linked so he was never caught. Now they are linked. And he was caught.
Probably what happened was that he was born in Canada with an American parent who was unaware that he had to go through the process of reporting the birth to the embassy and obtaining US citizenship, and then they just moved to the US and he lived his life just thinking his father had done this and he had obtained citizneship…
NOw, I have no idea about the social security information he was using and the card… But it could have been something crazy like his dad one day said “Oh shit, I better go get his social security card,” and this would have been in the 1960s or 1970s, perhaps in some backwoods in the US, and some guy at the office didn’t feel like doing his job or was just not very astute and he issued a social security card for a non-citizen illegitimately… Or there are potentially other scenarios, who knows. It used to be the case that some wallet company actually printed a couple fake cards that they would stick into wallets, and every year thousands of Americans would just write that fake number down as their own SSN.
That is my guess as to how he was paying taxes, etc., all this time.
There could also be other ways that he fell through bureaucratic cracks.
There are occasionally cases in my country where a child is born out of wedlock (this is a relevant detail) to a foreign woman whose husband is unknown or refuses paternity and she is incapable of acquiring citizenship for the child in her own country or she is unwilling to try because it is a criminal or higly indicting act, and then over here we do not recognize the birth of foreign children as giving them citizenship in our nation… So we actually end up with a completely nationless child, and then a sticky situation is presented: do we attempt to get this woman to obtain citizenship for her in her own country when she faces legal repercussions or the country can even just simply refuse to recognize it because citizenship is passed through the father?
Sometimes nothing is done because the child can be given an identity via permanent residency which automatically converts to citizenship after high school - I think this is what often happens…
Another fun note: Our government offices were not directly connected with hospitals, and so hospitals used to issue only a live birth document… Some parents would not turn these into government offices, which resulted in there being ghost children that officially did not exist.
Sometimes this was completely rectified when, one day, it was time for the kid to go to school, and they’d get the kid citizenship… But sometimes, for insane reasons, they would simply have the kid not to go to school and persist as legally non-existent.
You can also imagine how dozens of infanticides were discovered, as well a couple dozen abuse cases, after they made the move to close this loophole.