Time traveller establishing identity

[Beckdawrek]

So… Calamity Beck falls thru a time hole. Ends up in Modern day whatever prairie she’s on.
Would I know it was a different time right away? Maybe an airplane flies over.
Or I’m close to a highway and see vehicles.

I’m gonna surely eventually get somewhere if I start walking, if my horse doesn’t make it through.

A ranch. A small town. I’m gonna see power lines. I guess I could assume telegraph wires. Maybe train track. I’d know what those are.

Any way, I’m gonna be sure I’ve lost my mind. I’m maybe hungry, thirsty, tired and very afraid.
The first human I see is gonna know, right off something is very wrong.
They call 911.
I’ll have to be sedated. Wake up in an absolutely foreign environment.
Straight to the psych-ward.
Maybe I’d get an understanding therapist who determines my fate.

If I can’t be made to believe this time travel can’t be true, well I’ll never get out.
If I can figure out to play the game maybe I can get out to a half way house on outpatient care. There will be dozens of people helping. I could be diagnosed a true amnesiac. There must be services available to help such folks.

Yeah I’ll have an iPhone, drivers lisc., car, apartment. Free services and eventually a job, (Denny’s will hire anyone) inside a year.
I’ll be fine.

You run into a quaint, bowlegged girl, chewing a piece of hay, who likes horses, befriend her. She might have an interesting story to tell. Ya never know.

[pjd]

@Whack-a-Mole

Anyway, the relevance to this thread is one guy comes back with a Hitler painting from when Hitler was at art school figuring it would be worth a fortune. To which the moderator noted that since he brought it to the future in a time machine the painting would seem a few days old and thus a forgery and worthless.

Asimov did something similar with the declaration of independence.

[DPRK]

Whatever we are trying to get at, undocumented immigrants are a real thing all over the world, and most of them do not have piles of gold and silver coins.

[TriPolar]

Not now, but in 1870 there was greater chance that any random person falling in time hole was carrying at least one gold or silver coin. For silver coins perhaps not any more valuable today adjusted for inflation. Gold would be much more valuable today, but a single 1870 gold dollar still won’t pay for room and board for very long.

[Jasmine]

On top of all the problems the OP listed, he’s probably lucky if he can even read or write. He’d probably have the educational level of a 2nd grader.

[Happytree]

When i read the OP, i assumed the thread was started over musings about the TV series Outer Range. Then i saw this thread is a zombie, almost 15 years old!
I had to look up the show to make sure it wasn’t based on a book or something.

Summary

The show is about a cowboy who falls into a time hole in 1886 and winds up in modern times

OP, did you fall in a time hole and come out in 2009? Couldn’t you have warned us about Trump, or are you not allowed to interfere?

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@Johnny_L.A

But unless he can prove he is a U.S. citizen, he can’t work.

Have you been to the US?

[Saint_Cad]

@md2000

I recall reading the problem of travellers shredding their passports and flushing them during flight so when they arrive in the US or Canada, there is no documentation who they are or where they are from.

Don’t airlines have the passenger’s information linked to at least a passport number and country of origin on international flights?

[Johnny_L.A]

@Just_Asking_Questions

Have you been to the US?

Work legally.

@Happytree

The show is about a cowboy who falls into a time hole in 1886 and winds up in modern times

Maybe the creators read The Straight Dope Message Board. I wonder if I can bring a lawsuit?

[Sage_Rat]

I can’t answer the identity question but, from a practical standpoint, you can actually just drop him off with an Amish/Mennonite group and they’d probably be well suited to bringing him into the “modern” era.

[md-2000]

@Saint_Cad

@md2000

I recall reading the problem of travellers shredding their passports and flushing them during flight so when they arrive in the US or Canada, there is no documentation who they are or where they are from.

Don’t airlines have the passenger’s information linked to at least a passport number and country of origin on international flights?

When this started to become a problem - airlines fined for transporting passengers lacking documentation - things tightened up. 9-11 accelerated the process. Today, with a few exceptions (NAFTA, Schengen) persons travelling between countries need at least online pre-approval and need to provide their passport details, which are then matched at the check-in counter.

So our time-travelling cowboy will at least stay in the same country. Literacy may be a problem - so let’s presume he is sufficiently literate. Undertanding modern words, concepts, and processes may take a little while - but he’ll likely figure out soup kitchens and others will tell him where to find casual under-the-table work.

The original Day of the Jackal presumably tracks the book and in it, the protagonist steals the identity of a boy who died at a young age, from a tombstone. (After 9-11 this trick was made much harder). That led him to getting a passport. Plus, obtaining documents is a confusing circular process today - need other proof to even get a birth certificate. In DotJ he simply asks for it. Due to prevalence of identity theft, it has become far more difficult, and computers make it faster to spot such fraud. (When I worked in the computer department of a large company, in the late 1980’s we began getting mail from Revenue Canada that “the following individual will use this Social Insurance Number” as they used computer record matching and eliminated multiple SIN’s typically obtained by those intent on Unemployment Insurance fraud)

Also of interest is what our time traveller does in his old age, if he’s had half his employment life with no Social Security earnings and likely a few more years before he can obtain a SS number.

On the plus side, he’s arrived today in a magical time where he does not need to learn the complexities of clutch and gearshift to drive the average vehicle.

But I agree with previous posts, most likely he will end up in the homeless camps to start, getting free meals from soup kitchens. If he’s smart, he will pick up by osmosis details like what the rules are, what documents he needs for what, what money looks like today, how to get some via day labour, etc. Perhaps he can work his way into a decently paying manual labour job (construction? Warehouse? Amazon picker?) and find a cheap room somewhere, steal a bicycle to get around, etc.

IIRC from a different thread, for the normal person born, say, on a hippie commune with no documentation, they can petition the courts for documents when needed. That just ain’t a-gonna work for our guy.

[Johnny_L.A]

@CookingWithGas

Yeah; supposed this guy does produce proof–that he was born in 1840. How much good is that going to do him?

Say he was born in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1840. His birth was recorded in a church record. That won’t do him any good.

@BobArrgh

It is my understanding that there are whole industries set up to produce such documentation. Although I have not needed to avail myself of such realistic documents, I believe they are available for a rather pitiful sum of money. They can be purchased in any major city, especially if the city has a multinational population center.

So… The black market.

@Markxxx

He could get a social security number eventually but he’d have to prove that he never had one before. This would be done, eventually.

@ASL_v2.0

And there are in fact people walking around today who (1) can’t prove they are a US citizen (to the extent needed to get a passport or certificate of citizenship), but (2) the government also can’t prove they aren’t (to the extent needed to deport them).

What do such people do as far as work? Well, they either end up homeless, working under the table, or both.

I think I’ve heard of Hispanics who were taken into custody because they couldn’t prove their identities, and wouldn’t be release unless and until they could prove they’re citizens. (Or maybe I’m thinking of Born In East L.A.)

If a person cannot prove citizenship, and if the government cannot prove non-citizenship, then isn’t denying a person a livelihood a violation of Due Process?

What if some rich woman has a fetish for lost cowboys, and wants to help him establish himself (as opposed to keeping him as a pet)? What’s the legal process of establishing an identity, when the only ‘proof’ is almost 200 years old? Is there a way? Or is false identity through the black market the only option?

[Schnitte]

As part of proving his citizenship, he’d also have to prove time travel is real, since otherwise there’d be no explanation why someone born in 1840 is still alive today. Just producing a (demonstrably authentic) birth certificate or church record won’t be enough since without the proof of time travel, people would assume that the record relates to some other person who’s been dead a long time. And once he’s done proving time travel, he’d either be a celebrity or locked up in a research facility. Either way, finding legal employment will not be his top priority.

[Smapti]

@Beckdawrek

They call 911.
I’ll have to be sedated. Wake up in an absolutely foreign environment.
Straight to the psych-ward.

I’m not so sure about that. Cops deal with people suffering from delusions all the time and they rarely get 5150’d simply for “being crazy” unless they’re a danger to themselves or the community. More than likely they’d give him directions to the Salvation Army and send him on his way.

[Johnny_L.A]

Speaking of the Old West, did you notice the number of the train car at the beginning of Tombstone was 5150?

[md-2000]

We’ll take it as a given that there’s no value in having papers proving he’s 140 years old. (150 now). They didn’t even do fingerprints in those days. (If they did, that would be an interesting puzzle for the authorities). So any Thomas, Richard or Harold could produce a piece of paper and say this was them born in 1840, they simply would be considered delusional. By the 1860’s there were photographs, but that doesn’t really prove anything except a resemblance.

[DrDeth]

@Johnny_L.A

He’s going to have to come up with a way of supporting himself; probably as some sort of labourer. But unless he can prove he is a U.S. citizen, he can’t work.

You dont need to be a US citizen to work. You can be a legal resident. or have a visa.

And he can just say the records of his birth were lost.

However, he can just go to several Farm labor contractors and get a fake SSN. Or just apply for an ITIN.

To get money, go to a construction site or a ranch, and offer to work for cash.

[mbh]

My state will issue ID cards to homeless people. They look like drivers’ licenses, except at the top, they say “Identification Card” instead of “Driver’s License”. They will list the homeless shelter’s address as your address. I am guessing that you don’t need a birth certificate to get one.

I once encountered a guy with an ID from one of the northwestern states, I think either Washington or Oregon, that listed his domicile as the address of the homeless shelter in my town in New Mexico.

[md-2000]

Yes, so the succinct answer for the OP is - the time traveller will not be able to establish a valid identity against a skeptical public and state, absent some scientific breakthrough that makes it believeable. So they are essentially like any other homeless person or illegal immigrant. How they get by depends on their adaptibility and resourcefulness, but opportunities abound. Our society has means to prevent people from freezing and starving in the dark. At the very least, presumably, the traveller is healthy and of sound mind and educated in English and has some knowledge of appropriate social behaviour, unlike many homeless people, He is able and willing to work in whatever opportunity he gets. If necessary, he can learn about and get documentation of varying degrees of validity. Difficulty may arise if he has run-ins with law enforcement, but people not bent on criminal activity are low on the local police priority list.

[ASL_v2.0]

@md-2000

He is able and willing to work in whatever opportunity he gets.

Under the table, perhaps, but not legally.

@md-2000

At the very least, presumably, the traveller is healthy and of sound mind and educated in English and has some knowledge of appropriate social behaviour, unlike many homeless people

First of all, wow, kind of an unnecessary dig at the homeless population there (because lots of people with stable housing seem oblivious to appropriate social behavior, too, so no reason to single people without housing out). Second… I’m not super confident someone born in 1870 and transplanted into the present would have sufficient knowledge of appropriate social behavior to get by in our society absent some major growing pains.

Ain’t you ever head? The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.