I’m just amazed that al Qaeda had the foresight to install a terrorist operative here nearly 100-years ago.  They really are cunning bastards…

I just really hope that no one calls INS on her.

Although I hear now that even a birth certificate is worthless to them - did anyone else see the story about the Corpus Christi mother whose infant daughter was deported?

This is happening to a lot of very elderly people born in places and times when most people were illiterate and where government was non-existant - like the Rural South.  There have been stories out of Missippi and Alabama where no birth record exists because the births of black children were not recorded prior to WWII!

Are common citizens demanding silly things like the right to vote again? This is freedom run amok.

Time to quote Gil scott Heron (Man, I should start posting music that bites.)

http://www.leoslyrics.com/listlyrics.php?hid=mqljBdwZkwk=

It goes all the way back from Hollywood to hillbilly. From liberal to libelous, from “Bonzo” to Birch idol…born again. Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights…it’s all wrong. Call in the cavalry to disrupt this perception of freedom gone wild. God damn it…first one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom.

My grandmother is in this boat. She’s 96, and her birth certificate lists her name as “Baby Girl” because her parents hadn’t yet decided on a name for her. On top of that, the original birth certificate was lost decades ago—all she has now is a copy of the original. As a result, she can’t get a driver’s license (not that she drives at her age), and I doubt she’d be allowed to vote. What really makes me nervous is the Real ID stuff, which she’d never be able to get, and which is required for her to get her Social Security benefits…

I wonder if this will be a problem for my 89-year-old grandfather this year. He has always voted, but was born at home. He is a World War II vet though, so he probably has some paperwork proving that he was a citizen in 1942 or so.

‘Cause that would be a shock, that men would be able to prove their citizenship, but the women (unless they were the much less common WACs or WAVEs) would be shut out.

I can’t help but note the irony that when she was born, women didn’t have the right to vote and now some people want her to have it either!

Do IRS records show proof of citizenship?

The sheer numbers of people thrown off the rolls from that stuff is shocking, but really explains why Republicans put so much work into it.  It’s not a minor thing, but could easily swing an election.

>Do IRS records show proof of citizenship?

No, nothing in my dealings with SSA or IRS changed when I was naturalized.

Certainly an affidavit would work..and she must have been in an early census by name and listed as born in the U.S.  Of course such fixes don’t allow republican voter suppression to be as effective.

I think it would be relatively simple for Congress to pass legislation for states that require voters to prove id or citizenship, to require that the state must first establish a TOTALLY FREE means of doing so for EVERY person who requests identification.  They would have to repeal Real ID first, of course, otherwise they would be complete and total hypocrites.

Seriously, think of states where there are large contingents of retirees who are going to have to go to some lengths to prove citizenship.  I know this isn’t who the law INTENDED to disenfranchise, but part of me can’t help smirking at all the elderly citizens who were scared into voting R in 2004 in order to beat the evil brown people.  Now they are finding that they are the ones under suspicion.  It’s almost too perfect.

My mom was born in NYC at home in 1910.  The doc stopped off for a drink afterwards and never submitted a birth certificate.  Twenty years later when she needed one it was not there.  What she did use was her name on the census from 1910 and 1920.  This may not work today, but it is a place to start.

She and those Indiana Nuns should be filing federal lawsuits on this. The Supreme Court left open the door that the new Voter ID law could be unconstitutional “as applied,” even if it wasn’t facially unconstitutional.

...

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be that guy or anything, but - the Hesiod?

A smart political organization could put together some DEVASTATING ads featuring cadres of elderly, obviously harmless Americans talking about how thanks to photo-ID laws for voting they’re being disenfranchised after decades of voting.

The only real problem would be getting the budget together to produce/run them. Still, I think there’s a space here to really make this a compelling voting rights issue for the larger media.

The Supreme Court left open the door that the new Voter ID law could be unconstitutional “as applied,” even if it wasn’t facially unconstitutional.

But the problem comes with the claim of relief: the court wingnuts would like the claim to come after the election, so they can say ‘well, Wingnut X won by 5,000 votes, and you’ve only found 4,993 old people who couldn’t vote, so neener-neener’.

We moved my 94-year-old mother in law to AZ last year and had the same problem.  Born black in Mississippi in 1914, the state has no record of her birth, somehow she got a voter registration card in Indiana that does not transfer.  So we just went ahead an got her a US Passport!  Used as ID what she had—SS card, Indiana ID, letters addressed to her AZ house, letter from MS stating that she doesn’t exist (!).  Passport came back in 3 weeks.  Now she can vote in AZ.  For Obama, needless to say.

Spread the word.

Every state has remedies for such people to obtain identification. The procedures may take some time to implement but ID is possible.

I don’t know that it’s fair to say “ID is possible”. Yeah, I could work up a way to get an ID, but I have ready access to transportation, a sympathetic social network, a decent amount of disposable funds, and Internet access.

If you’re in your late 90s, and you don’t have close (and mobile!) family or friends to help you out, how do you get an ID? You have to determine what kind of ID is acceptable, where to get it, how to get it, how much it might cost to process the paperwork, what documentation you might need to dig up.... my mind reels.

I remember how hard it was to get my name changed back properly when I went through a divorce a few years back. What a nightmare. It’s been 8 years and I STILL get incorrectly labeled at times.

I know this makes me a bad person, but I snicker every time an indignant white person gets caught up in bureaucracy that they thought would only apply to other people.  Like the problems they had in Colorado when they decided that they would only issue drivers’ licenses in the name that was on your birth certificate, which meant than any woman who changed her name after getting married and then moved to Colorado was pretty much screwed.

They finally loosened the laws a tad, but it cracked me up how many people I saw online who were indignant that they were being denied drivers’ licenses just because they didn’t have the required documentation.  Couldn’t the clerk look at them and see that they were Real Americans, unlike those brown people?

Of course, Colorado is the same state that decided it was totally legit to use prison labor to pick crops when migrant farmworkers stopped coming to the state due to their extremely restrictive illegal labor laws.  I don’t think that’s worked out very well for them, either.

Oops...She’s white!

The voter ID law was designed to keep poor blacks from voting for Democrats...now what are they going to do…

Old white people are the base for the folks who think that restricting access to the polls is a good thing.

I was in Arizona when Prop 200 passed, and I voted against it.  I felt that anyone who voted for it should have their ballots thrown out.  After all, you are voting to eliminate voting rights, and if you so hate voting rights, why should you suffer by having them?

This particular woman is a staunch Democrat so obviously the new law is working exactly as planned.  The woman has no birth certificate.  She was born at home in Kentucky. She has no school records. The schools she attended no longer exist.  She has no passport.  She has never left the US.  She has a social security card, a Medicare card, and an expired Texas drivers license.  That is insufficient in Arizona.

I say deport her!

Although I hear now that even a birth certificate is worthless to them - did anyone else see the story about the Corpus Christi mother whose infant daughter was deported?

Well, I just went and looked that one up, and it looks like the asshole got what was coming to her—she called up INS to get her illegal boyfriend deported so she could get custody, and instead INS sent the baby with the father, because he had physical custody at the time.

Fits right in with the pattern of white people getting screwed because they tried to use the law as a cudgel against poor brown people. “Oh my God, I’m a white American! Why are they sending my baby daughter to Mexico just because her father is a Mexican citizen and has custody of her?”

If Mexican laws work like ours, then the child was a Mexican citizen as well as an American one and had just as much right to live with her father as her mother. People have other recourses to get physical custody of a child without getting the other parent *deported*.

Not that it sounds like the guy was a prize; she spoke of being afraid he’d hit her. Which is totally wrong and if he was abusive he deserved to be arrested, but I find it pretty much impossible to believe that if a woman went to the court and said that her abusive boyfriend had absconded with their baby and she wanted a temporary order granting custody and police protection to remove the baby to her home, and just happened to mention that the boyfriend was Mexican, that she wouldn’t get said temporary order. Getting a man deported because you want custody is inherently not cool; if abuse is involved you can go through channels.

INS is a huge evil bureaucracy. It is *always* a mistake to assume a huge evil bureaucracy will ever be your friend. Ever.

Whoops, re-read that article. The woman was not a white American, but a Hispanic American. Which makes it even *stupider* that she involved INS, who probably would cheerfully have deported *her* for having the last name Castro if they had any legal ability to do so.

INS: not anyone’s friend, but *especially* not your friend if your name is Monica Castro and your skin is brown, regardless of what’s on your or your daughter’s birth certificate.

Tom, you don’t need to leave the country to get a passport.  It costs money, but it sounds like (from the experience of another poster) that what she has is enough to get her a passport and get her back on the rolls.

If you can document each step in this, or get a reporter to take it on as a human interest story, so much the better!

Alara, the mother was “brown” too (Hispanic), and the father was abusive. He didn’t have legal custody - just physical custody, which means he drove off with the baby one day and didn’t let the mother see her ever again. She didn’t have the money to pursue custody and she was afraid he was going to hurt the baby, so she called INS.

Regardless, even if the mother was Satan, I’m concerned about deporting the American-born infants of American-born citizens just because the American mother “looks Mexican”.

Well, I just went and looked that one up, and it looks like the asshole got what was coming to her—she called up INS to get her illegal boyfriend deported so she could get custody, and instead INS sent the baby with the father, because he had physical custody at the time.

Hey, he was only a homicide suspect—why would there be any problem letting him take an infant he doesn’t have legal custody of out of the country?

If *you* or someone you know gets hit by this kind of fascist crap, get a passport.

They’re expensive, but you *need* to get one.  Period.  It is not safe to be without a passport.  Borrow the money if you have to.

You can satisfy the passport ID requirements *entirely* with affidavits if you have to, which you may if you have no current photo ID or birth certificate. (If you have to use affadavits from people who know you, it’s quite a lot of affadavits, though.  And those people have to prove *their* identities.)