In a book I’ve just re-read, the villain - a US embassy official - gives two people US passports to assist in their evacuation and his getting the loot. But I’m wondering how one would translate a passport so issued into actual recognised citizenship. Do you just go to someone like Eva Luna and get them to take care of the administravia?
A passport is proof of citizenship. You could use it to get a drivers license, bank account, etc. The one problem would be a social security number. You could just make one up (which is what an illegal alien aquaintance of mine did), but you run the risk of it catching up to you one day.
I had to prove citizenship this summer to a gvernment entity so that I could volunteer there. They were unfamiliar with my birth certificate (loosely speaking), a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, but they happily accepted my American passpart as proof. Of course, to get the passport, I had submitted the same Consular report but that office had knew what they were dealing with.
I would be surprised that, if such a case were to happen in real life, that the appropriate embassy does not issue a passport with just one year validity and make the appropriate report (along the lines of “passport XYZ issued to ABC; do not reissue until other proof of citizenship is presented”) to the State Department.
I am missing some context. An embassy official hands out two passports to random people to help them evacuate? Is this based on any previous knowledge that the individuals are in fact citizens of the United States?
I found this on an embassy website:
“An emergency passport may be issued if you need to travel urgently. The emergency passport will be valid to not more than one year and cannot be extended. You are then required to exchange your emergency passport for a full-validity passport upon completion of your emergency travel by submitting a new application and photographs to any passport facilities in the U.S. or U.S. Embassies/Consulates abroad. Certain applicants may be required to submit further evidence of citizenship and/or identity with the new application. No fee will be charged for the full validity passport provided you submit a new application before the temporary passport expires.”
So that, I think, would preclude someone from getting citizenship based on an emebergency passport.
You only get a US passport if you are a US citizen. When my family was evacuated from Lebanon during the 2006 war, our daughter (whom we adopted in Lebanon) still only had Lebanese citizenship and a Lebanese passport. The US embassy couldn’t give us a passport for her, so they gave us a ‘letter of transport’ which would allow her on the evacuation ship even though she was not a US citizen. After the ship reached Cyprus, we convinced the US embassy there to give our daughter a humanitarian parole, which, while not a visa, would allow her to enter the US for a period of time. After we entered the US, we went through the US citizenship process for our daughter, after which we were able to obtain a US passport for her. But not before.
The embassy will issue emergency passports, but only to people who are eligible for a US passport in any case. Some friends of ours gave birth shortly before being evacuated, and their daughter was given an emergency passport, bypassing much of the bureaucracy and waiting around. But the kid was born to two US citizens, so she was in any case eligible for a passport.
In short: no citizenship, no passport.
When was the book set? Didn’t consuls used to have far more autonomy issuing things like passports and visas?
It would have had to be a long time ago. AFAIK, granting of citizenship has in recent times been the purview of DHS, and before that the INS; consuls and embassies are run by the State Department and so can issue passports, but not citizenships, which is the prequisite for a passport.
As others have mentioned, the temporary passport that a consular official can issue is valid for only a year and the person has to then provide real proof of citizenship. The deal with the passport is that legally it is considered to be prima facie evidence of the citizenship status of a person, so that in the course of normal administrative procedures like a border crossing for people not on the watchlist, as long as the document really was issued in that name by a proper authority, you are not hassled.
But the fact remains: a passport does not convey the condition of citizen, it is an accessory to it. You do not become a a citizen because you are issued a passport, you are issued a passport because you are (presumed) a citizen; if it turns out you’re NOT really one, the passport comes void.
A corrupt official may, surely, issue such a document fraudulently, using forged papers or whatnot or arranging a convenient fire shortly after issuance to destroy the record, and the persons with the real-but-illegally-acquired papers can travel with it for some time; but they would be wise to use that time to get in touch with some really good forgers/ID thieves to assemble them a good, airtight set of fake/stolen birth certificates, SSA numbers, drivers’ licenses, etc. in order to assemble a complete "citizen"identity (which would still be illegal and void as soon as detected!).