some developers will publish the photos on the internet for you to view and to share w/ others. Such photos might have a date provided by the developer and visable on the web site.
Minxsmom,
I don’t know that either of those ideas is feasible. After all, with scenario #1 you have to get illegal aliens to waltz into the INS, admit they are illegal, and hope you are telling the truth about making them legal citizens as opposed to deporting them on the spot. Good luck on that one. Did you see all the problems they had even getting these people to do a census form?
With scenario #2 where they open a bank account, don’t you need a social security number to do that, or some other form of legal ID that they, by definition, WON’T have because they are illegal aliens?
If your father works for the INS, then Im sure they have rules on what proof you need & how to use it.
If I wanted to prove I was doing something at a specific date I would just open a checking account at the bank that day.
A simple two step process:
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Get your picture take with Mount Rushmore in the background.
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Destroy Mount Rushmore (or add the face of Ronald Reagan) before said date.
The only drawback I can think of is the outside chance that there may be slightly more illegal aliens than Mount Rushmores in the US.
Go to the airport where they have arrival and departure dates. Go to Wall Street or any Brokerage firm where they have a ticker.
Stand in front of the ticker. Take 2 photos, one close-up and one further away.
This one is unbeatable. Keep running red lights in front of the police department. When a cop pulls you over he will write a ticket. Take multiple pictures, of the cop, the ticket with him holding it, and close-ups. You have the the ticket as evidence. Don’t pay the fine. That will be permanent evidence, you can always go to the Court building and they will be able to pull out the ticket because you haven’t paid it. The $$$$$ in fines and penalties will be worth it.
Similar answer. Go to the nearest multiplex movie theatre and take a picture in front of the marquee. That should narrow it down to the nearest week or so. If they happen to be running some real stinkers (Coyote Ugly, anyone?), you might get it down to a day or two.
That would work great, Finagle, especially if they were, say, showing Star Wars, Fantasia, and Psycho, or some similar collection, at the same time…
California did this a number of years ago.
Given what can be done to manipulate visual images these days, I don’t think you can be fixated on a photo. As soon as you can turn around, there will be people out on the street selling doctored photos, just like they do SS cards and driver’s licenses.
Since these people are here illegally and have tried to avoid any legal record of their existence, the government has a big problem: no SSN, no tax returns, no driver’s licenses.
I know I’m jaded, but everything is up for grabs. But in an orderly-run society you have to have certain criteria re evidence, so the usual, sworn affidavits of witnesses and employers, etc. will have to be accepted.
When I lived in Green Valley in Northern California, the fruit pickers lived on the property of the farmer and only ventured as far as the closest convenience store, usually riding a bicycle. They tried to lay low as much as possible. They sent money to Mexico with a postal money order. My son ran a restaurant in S. CA and they gave him fake green cards and when the INS raided, he was left with zero cooks. But, they were soon back with a new name and SSN.
They really are the invisible people in our society. Making them visible is very difficult.
Is there something in the law that says the illegal immigrant must have been in the US the entire time since the photo is taken?
If so, I think you’ve got a bigger conundrum than you originally posted about.
I take it you’ve never seen Week-end at Bernie’s.
How about this idea: Go apply for a piece of official ID on a certain date.
e.g.
In California, in addition to a driver’s license, the DMV also issues a state “identification card”. (I happen to have both of them.) So on the one day you want to prove you’re in the country go down to the DMB and get either a driver’s license or a state ID card.
I must say I don’t understand the objections to the notary public. If the IRS isn’t going to trust a notary public, why would they trust a photo store employee, a postal employee (who could easily change the postmark on a stamped photo), or anybody else?
Most of these suggestions assume you could use your own camera, and that the difficult part is finding the thing to photograph yourself near as proof of date.
One thing INS could do if they want to provide a standard way for people to prove the date of a picture is to provide a backdrop at the INS office with a clock and a calendar (say, on the wall, behind glass, possibly with a monitor who would prevent tampering), where people could take their own camera and photograph themselves.
They could put some reasonably difficult-to-duplicate design on the backdrop to make it harder to forge or tamper with the photos.
This method definitely relies on the assumption that a photo is relatively “unalterable”. I could go down and take pictures of the empty backdrop, and then photoshop people into them later. A call would have to be made about the minimum photo quality acceptable (i.e. must be on real photo paper with no pixels visible) in order to put a reasonable amount of trust in such a system.
Thanks to all that replied. I got further clarification on the initial distrust so to speak of the notary public. It’s twofold. First, apparently a notary public (and please correct me if I’m wrong) does not attest to the truthfulness of a statement (or a picture, if you want to call a picture a “statement”) but only the fact that the person making that statement is there in front of them signing at that time. So having a notary public stamping something is only saying “okay this person is here signing it” but speaks nothing towards the legitimacy of the photo. Confusing, but I dunno.
The second reason is more of a cultural reason. In Mexico, there’s a quasi-legal position called a “notario” that can assist with some legal endeavors (and again, please correct me if I’m stating this wrong). In the US, however, these people obviously have no power. But in immigrant neighborhoods, particularly Hispanic neighborhoods, many people call themselves “notarios” and operate in that same quasi-legal fashion, and claim to be able to do much more in the immigration area than they’re really allowed to do. The concern is that with the similarity of notario and notary public – along with the already evidenced “fudging” these notarios seem to do – that the very real possibility of major fraud and/or confusion exists.
A couple other comments on some suggestions. With state IDs, that was suggested, but not every state has such a program, from what I was told. Similar objections exist to the airport or INS office idea … what about the immigrant that lives three, four hours from either? The hope is to find a standard way of doing things that all can access.
Also, to answer other questions, no the INS has NOT done something like this in the past. This is the first time, I believe, that the “must be in by” date is in the near future rather than in the near or distant past. So from what I understand, they’re starting anew with this problem. And again, this is the first step of a long process, and I don’t think asking them to come into an office for this, then the next … then the last step is feasible, especially again for those that don’t live near the office (and add to that, it’d severely back up an already backlogged workforce).
I think the photo index card is money, followed closely by the postcard picture with a postmark. Thanks guys. Oh, and forget we discussed any of this. 
Go to a theme park, go on one of the rides where they take your photo as you whizz round, and use that. These usually have the date burned in to the photo, and would be very hard to fake.
Having said that, I agree that just about any photo evidence can be faked these days, so I’m surprised a photo would be considered as the gold standard by which to judge anything.
It’s quite easy to show an unfaked photo was not taken BEFORE a certain date - the newspaper headline trick works fine as do many of the other ideas posted here. The hard part is to prove a photo was not taken AFTER a certain date. The movie theatre marquee idea might work, but someone has to do a lot of checking to establish what was showing there and when. You need something that shows the date and which changes when the date does: possibiities include departures board at an airport or rail station, or a large-scale ‘Time Square’ kind of electronic noticeboard.
The only real solution to the “not taken AFTER” problem is to involve the person or organisation who require the proof. So, take half a dozen picture of self in front of a large, public news-stand featuring all the day’s newspapers but also many weeklies and monthly magazines. That’s hard to fake and contains lots of evidence. Seal five in separate individual envelopes. Put these 5 envelopes inside another, larger envelope and send it to the INS with a letter explaining what you have done and why, and ask them to date stamp the letter and each of the five envelopes, and keep the whole caboodle on file. If push comes to shove, you stand a chance of proving what you need to prove thanks to the nature of the photo and the date stamp. And you get five chances, since opening any one of the envelopes doesn’t devalue the worth of the others as evidence.
IANAL, and just a WAG, but the INS will probably need to accept anything (utility bills, cashed checks, notarized affadavits, pictures, etc.) that shows by burden of proof that the person was in the US by that date or else start accepting notices that they are being sued. It sounds like this will be a tough policy to establish and carry out. US immigration is a PITA, for all parties involved.
The idea of requiring one specific type of photograph doesn’t sound like a reasonable requirement. It sounds like the INS wants someone else to make de facto ID cards but doesn’t want to admit it or have anything to do with the making of these cards.
Then again, I am not a lawyer. Does anyone have an opinion about this or can anyone cite a precedence?
Arnold: I intend to see Week-end at Bernie’s fore-noon to-morrow, unless my auto-mobilized carraige acquires a leak and spews rock-oil onto the macadam. Of course, then I shall be forced to tele-phone the triple-A and get those bastards to send me some spare parts via auto-gyro. I do hope my Babbage machine continues to function and does not leak steam as it has been wont to do. Why, it has not been more than a few weeks since the ‘Galvanized’ rubber hoses cracked and required replacement. I had to tell my manservant to fetch some putty at the local factory store.
Isn’t using archaic dialect fun? To my knowledge, ‘weekend’ has not beed hypenated for going on a century now.
The OP: I can’t think of any way to verify date beyond a doubt. The best ones were ruled out in the OP, IMHO.
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Get a special P.O. Box at the INS for just this one thing.
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Have the person mail a photo to that special INS address.
The INS would only need to do 3 things to make this happen: get the P.O. Box, have a storage place for the received photographs, and have someone(thing) sort the envelopes eventually. The postmark will easily establish the date … yes, they can be forged, but it might be suspicious if someone’s envolope arrived at the INS 3 weeks after the postmarked date.
You would have to make sure that the person follows a strict formula on the return address part of the envelope, for example, “In CAPITAL letters, in the top left corner, legibly (sp?) print your last name, then first name. Below that, print your full state’s name.” That would make it easier for the sorters to get it to the correct INS office. Or, have specially made envelopes with different barcodes on each one. Certain numbers in the barcode could reflect certain areas in the U.S., for instance LA area, CA could be 031xxxxx. That way, a machine could sort the envolopes and send them to the proper INS office. If the immigrant records the bar code number before he sends the mail, identification would be simple (if he goes to the correct INS office). With this method the INS can cover the costs of envelope manufacture, sorting, etc. by charging a nominal fee ($1.00 or so) for the immigrant to buy the envelope (find a national distributor to get the envelopes to supermarkets/mini-markets/etc. around the country).
This seems like the best idea if the INS wants to spend some time on it rather than looking for a quick fix.
Huh? There have been amnesties in the past, but like you said, they you to have been resident in the US continuously for years and years. But the idea of announcing that you will get amnesty if you are in BEFORE a certain date, that is just inviting illegals to come into the country, to beat the deadline.
Get us more details on this INS program. If this is really true, I’m going to have a chat with my congressman.