# How to prove US citizenzhip in this case?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 2, 2009, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705 "2009-04-02T13:40:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/21 "2009-04-02T19:26:21Z")
> [@Sapo](#):
>
> This was going to be my question. What’s to stop your random illegal alien from saying “I am American and have no papers”?
Living on an international border as I do, and having a non-American wife, I always wonder what would happen were I the target of a random border patrol stop (yeah, they do that here) if she doesn’t have her green card. It’s not like _I_ carry any proof of citizenship for myself on my person, either. My only attribute is that I don’t “look Mexican” (not being one).
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/22 "2009-04-02T20:08:03Z")
> [@Keeve](#):
>
> Sounds to me similar to any of a million other cases where something happened but was not documented, like if you and I made a verbal contract with no witnesses. It can’t be proven, so the law can’t consider it. The kid in your case is probably totally out of luck.
If this were the law – and it’s clearly not, given other commentary by posters – I’m fairly certain it would be unconstitutional. You can’t make it impossible for a person to claim citizenship of _any_ country.
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### Author:  [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2009, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/23 "2009-04-02T20:23:10Z")
> [@Balthisar](#):
>
> Living on an international border as I do, and having a non-American wife, I always wonder what would happen were I the target of a random border patrol stop (yeah, they do that here) if she doesn’t have her green card. It’s not like _I_ carry any proof of citizenship for myself on my person, either. My only attribute is that I don’t “look Mexican” (not being one).
This was the plot of Cheech Marin’s movie, _[Born in East LA](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092690/)_.
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### Author:  [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/24 "2009-04-02T20:29:42Z")
> [@Balthisar](#):
>
> Living on an international border as I do, and having a non-American wife, I always wonder what would happen were I the target of a random border patrol stop (yeah, they do that here) if she doesn’t have her green card. It’s not like _I_ carry any proof of citizenship for myself on my person, either. My only attribute is that I don’t “look Mexican” (not being one).
Your concern is not unfounded. I was once harassed by two immigration officers who stopped me in the middle of the jetway while boarding a domestic flight. “Mr. Sapo, could you please show us your Resident Card” they said flashing their IDs. I didn’t have it, of course. After some back and forth, they produced a photocopy of a newspaper clipping saying that I was in fact supposed to carry it with me.
They let me go and I have always carried the stupid card with me when I travel more than 100 miles from home. I have never been asked for it again.
I presume that if you are stopped without her card, she might be detained while you run home and fetch the card. I don’t know.
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### Author:  [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2009, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/25 "2009-04-02T21:19:54Z")
> [@acsenray](#):
>
> You can’t make it impossible for a person to claim citizenship of _any_ country.
Its a rare circumstance but this does happen on occasion – that a person cannot claim citizenship of any existing nation – so there’s a treaty on what to do:
U.N. Convention Relating the Status of Stateless Persons
[http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/o\_c\_sp.htm](http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/o_c_sp.htm)
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### Author:  [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2009, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/26 "2009-04-02T22:11:05Z")
A friend of mine was in that situation. She eventually became a US citizen but was without citizenship in any country until then.
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### Author:  [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2009, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/27 "2009-04-03T11:30:02Z")
> [@Sapo](#):
>
> They let me go and I have always carried the stupid card with me when I travel more than 100 miles from home. I have never been asked for it again.
And then what happens when/if you gain your citizenship? Are you expected to carry your naturalization documents with you everywhere you go?
> [@](#):
>
> I presume that if you are stopped without her card, she might be detained while you run home and fetch the card. I don’t know.
That’s what’s funny about it. What reason do they have to believe that I’m not in the country illegally? I could be from Canada, or I could have renounced my citizenship after naturalizing in Mexico for all they know. Pretty much the only thing it would come down to is my white skin. Some people call that racial profiling.
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2009, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/28 "2009-04-03T13:23:11Z")
There are a couple things about this thread that bother me. On the one hand, it seems perfectly clear that in order to deport someone, they have to find a country to acknowledge them. Suppose a wetback (I am using this term descriptively, not pejoratively) simply claims he was born undocumented in South Texas and his birth was undocumented and never went to school and gave a false name. He couldn’t be deported since there is no reason for Mexico to take him. I guess he couldn’t be denied a SS card either.
I still recall an incident that happened in the summer of 1962, long before illegal immigration became such a loaded issue. My brother and I were travelling in a Greyhound bus somewhere along the Mississippi coast. At a stop, a guy with a Border Patrol uniform got on, went right back to the middle of the bus where we were seated and asked my brother for ID. Fortunately, he was in the US Air Force and showed his military ID and the guy thanked him and left the bus, not asking either me or any other passenger for ID. What would have happened had he not had military ID? What do they mean by ID? Would a PA licence be sufficient (that’s all I had). And why did he pick out my brother through a green tinted window, no less? Suppose he had no ID? After all, no law requires it and there was even less reason for ID in those days. If you didn’t drive, you had nothing that really identified you. And licences didn’t have photos in those days either.
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### Author:  [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_the_Impaler)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2009, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/29 "2009-04-03T14:13:03Z")
No, to get a social security card, you have to prove citizenship. That means a birth certificate or, in my client’s case, documentation showing that the government agrees you’re a citizen.
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### Author:  [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/30 "2009-04-03T15:38:38Z")
> [@niblet\_head](#):
>
> No, to get a social security card, you have to prove citizenship. That means a birth certificate or, in my client’s case, documentation showing that the government agrees you’re a citizen.
Not citizenship, but legal status (my wife has a legal SSN, for example). Illegal’s are entitled to a tax payer identification number, I believe.
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### Author:  [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_the_Impaler)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/31 "2009-04-03T15:42:29Z")
If you’re not a US citizen, you still have to show where you’re a citizen of. You also have to prove identity, normally done with a birth certificate, which in most cases is going to correspond to your citizenship.
My larger point is that no one can just walk into a social security office, claim US citizenship without proof, and get a Social Security card.
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### Author:  [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/32 "2009-04-03T18:22:08Z")
When I was in the US as a student, my sponsors took me to the SSN office to get a number. I was instructed to say I needed one for ID purposes only. I got a card in the mail 3 days later with my brand new SSN and saying “Not valid for work without ISN authorization”. I wanted it for bank accounts and such, so I didn’t mind, but there was a way to get a SSN.
I understand that those laws changed (even before 9/11) and that you could no longer ask for an SSN for ID purposes only.
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### Author:  [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_the_Impaler)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2009, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-prove-us-citizenzhip-in-this-case/491705/33 "2009-04-03T19:32:10Z")
Wow. Now you can’t even open up a checking account without a urine sample.
I wonder if what you got was actually a tax payor id number. I know that the IRS does not care about your immigration status. Everyone is required to file a tax return, even undocumented immigrants.
Now I’m wondering how much the Department of the Treasury retains from unpaid tax refunds to undocumented immigrants…
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