I remember many years ago reading a newspaper article about the tough road some siblings were facing, they had no birth certificates or social security cards and had never been put on a census form.
Their mother was a religious fanatic or conspiracy theorist or something of the sort and had therefore intentionally kept them off any government records. They were home births, she had never got them SS#s, and had never filled out a census form with their names and info.
They were turning into adults and at least one was trying to join the military but they were having problems doing anything of course, I don’t remember if the article covered what solution they found if any.
I see you can get a passport without a birth certificate by having a blood relative swear to your identity, I imagine that might be your best bet to establishing your identity.
But so much in life asks for a birth certificate.
Lawyers and money are needed. Have a judge rule that you exist, and issue some documentation from the court that is officially equivalent to a Birth Certificate.
Everything regarding the government and your identity can be resolved (to the government’s satisfaction) with sufficient lawyering and money.
I can remember reading an article about SS - it was not uncommon up into the 80s to have people wandering out of the bush in Alaska needing to establish ID. People in remote settlements that didn’t get out and around and so forth.
I know that shortly after I was born my parents got the 3 of us SS numbers, we have 7600, 7601 and 7602 - and we were born 2 years apart, so obviously it happened after I popped out.
When was the big push to get everybody SS registered? I know it was mandatory to get registered if you were born in hospital in the 70s.
It started when the IRS wouldn’t let people take deductions for their children without a Social Security number. I remember reading about people who were claiming deductions for their “children” Fluffy, Fido, etc., and suddenly those “children” went away. I think this was in the 1980’s.
My friend (who would’ve probably been born mid-eighties) had a conspiracy theorist mother who declined to get him a SS# because she thought it would keep him from getting drafted. When he was in his late teens and wanted to get a job, he went to the SS office with his birth certificate and they issued him a number. Doesn’t seem to have been a problem.
Of course, if he also didn’t have a birth certificate, I can see where it might have been a bigger deal.
I think it was later than that. The only reason that babies need a SSN is for the tax forms and I want to say that that rule went into effect in the 80s
Program to coordinate issue of SSN simultaneous w. birth registration by state started demo in 1987 and was authorized nationwide after 1989. Requirement of SSN for all claimed dependents over age 2 in your return became effective tax year 1989, had been over age 5 since TY 1987.
If you rad the post just above yours, you’ll see your parents could claim you (as you were under 5) up until 1989. And there’s a good likelihood, it was the law change in '89 that prompted your registration.
That would assume belonging to an established church with clean paperwork and not to some sort of commune or one of those polygamous more-Mormon-than-thou churches.
There was a substantial drop in the number of children claimed and that’s clearly a fact.
However - this being GQ - I should mention that there’s no evidence pets were being claimed. I’d love to debunk that idea entirely, but I don’t think anyone has evidence to be sure.
An alternate explanation to the “pet theory” is that multiple people had been claiming the same child. For example, a divorced couple might both claim the same child. If they didn’t compare notes, they might not even realize they were doing something wrong. When a social security number became necessary, it gave the IRS a way to verify that each child was being claimed only once. It also meant that if Mom got the SSN for the kid, Dad couldn’t claim that kid without asking Mom for the number. I find this explanation much more plausible.
I find it unlikely that many claimed ‘‘Fluffy’’. Now some other dog or cat names… Back before the SS requirement I had Jake. No, I never claimed him, not even his medical bills.
No. You may even leave the hospital without an actual Official COLB in hand (sorry, Birthers).
Examples here from webpages of hospitals in Hawaii, Georgia and Michigan that include the procedure for getting the COLB and SSN issued to the newborn. Takes from weeks to months to have the final document in hand even if you file everything properly on the spot. Baby and Mommy not held hostage if you don’t.
In most states by now whichever entity does the births registry and the SSA office have joined under the above-referenced laws to create a “one-stop-shop” setup so the paperwork is done just one time at one place, but it’s not an absolute mandate.
Tangentially related – until astonishingly recently (as in within the last decade or two), a baptismal certificate was considered equivalent to a birth certificate in Quebec. They finally decided that everyone had to have a birth certificate, and provided for people who only had baptismal certificates to get one expediently. (A birth certificate is still sometimes informally called a baptistaire.)
I was born in 1943. I made do with some sort of registration document until about 8 years ago when the passport office demanded a real birth certificate. I had to get one from Harrisburg. Funny the passport people put more confidence in a more easily forged modern document than the genuine 1943 vintage one. I have my baptismal certificate. Not sure why I didn’t try it.
Besides that the modern document is not really “more easily forged” (probably is printed with a bunch of security features; and how do you know *someone in 1943 *did not forge that “sort of registration document”), if the vintage “registration document” from 1943 wasn’t an actual official Birth Certificate to begin with, then the authorities in 2003 (post-9/11, may we note) wanted a document whose source and content they could verify with whoever vouches for its validity. A Certificate of Live Birth is an official certification BY the state of what is the information about your circumstances of birth that the state HAS in their files, so with it if they had reason to be suspicious they could ring up the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Whoever Does This and ask, hey, Ed, look at this Certificate, is this right?
(Of course, problem is they don’t do it, and meanwhile certified copies get mislaid or left unsecured, or the issuing agencies leave stacks of preprinted, presealed blanks where they can get stolen. Here in PR we had to change the whole format of our COLBs and void every copy in circulation issued before Jan 2011 because of massive ID theft fraud)