Not talking about people who simply have had all their records destroyed (but it is related) but I’m talking about somebody with absolutely no proof they ever existed in the world.
A number of fictional stories involve somebody falling in love with somebody who doesn’t belong in “our” world. Time travelers, alternate dimension hoppers, supernatural beings, space aliens, mermaids, and anything else that has absolutely nothing confirming their identity.
Now, the end of these stories imply at some point these two characters will settle down and get married, or at the very least attempt to live a normal life. Now, pretending that nobody else sees them as anything but your typical citizen (as is people aren’t pointing out why somebody is trying to marry a space alien in the first place) how exactly would marriage work, or even just helping them get a job? I know illegal immigrants also fall into this problem but at least from what I understand, they can still petition their home government or relatives for various documents or at least have someplace to fall back to if worse comes to worse, but how would somebody who has absolutely nothing and no home country do this?
Space aliens, etc, aside, everybody had a place, a home country, a place where they were born and the legal/civic/administrative status that goes with it. The question is how they go about proving it.
Take the US, for example. If you were born in the US, it’s the fact that you were born in the US that give you the status of a US citizen. Your birth certificate doesn’t give you that status; it’s merely evidence that you have that status. If your birth certificate is destroyed or lost or your birth was never registered in the first place, you don’t lose the status of US citizen. You may face various practical difficulties satisfying the authorities that you have that status but, as the lawyers would say, your problem is an evidentiary one, not a substantive one. You are still a US citizen.
Right, marriage. How much of a problem a lack of paperwork will give you is going to depend on the marriage laws of the jurisdiction in which you happen to marry. If you find yourself in a jurisdiction in which (a) you can’t validly marry without a licence issued by some public official, and (b) you can’t get a licence without a birth certificate or other paperwork, your options are to do whatever you have to do to reconstitute the missing paperwork, or go to a jurisidiction which doesn’t impose these requirements. Most common law jurisdictions will recognise a marriage celebrated in another jurisdiction provide the formalities of that jurisdiction have been complied with. So if you get married in a jurisidction which doesn’t require you to produce your birth certificate, and then return home with a marriage certificate from that jurisdiction, they won’t look behind the marriage certificate.
I would add that with absolutely no documentation at all, difficulty in organising a wedding is unlikely to be the greatest issue you will face. Having no identity documents of any kind will mean you can’t drive, buy alcohol, enter a bar, open a bank account, get credit, obtain a passport, etc, etc.
But see, people marrying are adults, and adults would be expected to be able to bring photo ID. Thats not the case with a 15 year old, who might only have no-photo birth certificate, and its fake… Well he might then apply for bank accounts with no photo ID, and then apply for a passport, with witnesses signatures of varying reliability and register to vote, and apply for a drivers license… all on the back of the no -photo fake birth certificate.
So whether that photo ID used for registering the marraige is the fully truthful one, no one is checking. However if someone is using a false ID, its at least the copy of the photo ID can become evidence if there is an investigation into the false ID person .
My mother, who died in 2006, never at any time in her life had any documentation of her birth. The births of her brothers were recorded in the parish church, but the girls were not recorded. It was common in those days for people to have no such evidence, but a paper trail of her birth being declared and accepted followed her around. This never got in the way of getting a social security cad, marriage, etc. She says she lied about her age in 1923 to get a drivers license.
She was the second born, and her older brother was born in the old country, so even her birth in the USA is taken as a self-declared atricle of faith.
Laws about identity have always kept a window open for people like her, who might have applied for a passport as recently as 11 years ago, and she would have had no trouble assembling the necessary alternative documentation to support her application. At the very least, there could be a sworn statement by a guarantor who would attest that he knew the applicant personally as so-and-so for a number of years. There is a professional iist of eligible guarantors, including such officals as police, clergyman, teacher, etc.
By the way, when my wife and I got married in Kentucky in 1993, I don’t recall ever needing to get out any documentation, not even a drivers license. We just filled in the identity information on the license applications and handed them the fee, which they happily put in their revenue drawer.
I think that this is much harder now than it was even 50 years ago. I once knew someone who had no documentation; he was in his twenties then and had been born during the war and left with his grandmother who lived in an isolated cottage.
When I knew him he was working as a farrier. He drove a van which was registered to the landlord of the pub where he lived and worked evenings behind the bar; all for cash. He did have a driving licence, but in those days there were no ID checks to circumvent - you just took your test and applied. He was caught by HMRC in the end after winning a competition and getting his picture in the paper.
This depends on the state, the bar, and the time of day. If you try going into a college bar in most US states on a Friday night during the peak party seasons, you’ll probably be turned away without proof of age because if you’re not drinking, you’re just wasting space that could be filled with someone who could be.
I never produced any documentation when I:
got a SS card,
got a driver’s license,
registered to vote (or when I voted),
got married.
All this was in the 50s and early 60s. I did have to produce a birth certificate when I got a passport. But the name on the BC was different from the one I used, and had used at least since kindergarten. No problem. Just get two people to sign an affidavit testifying that I was the same person. My parents were still alive and were actually the only two people in the world who could actually testify knowingly, but I’m sure I could have gotten a couple of friends to lie.
I imagine it would be very difficult today. People trusted each other in those days.
Back in my grandparents’ day, the only documentation any of them had were the immigration records and the immigration official took their word for it.
In Germany anyone 13 or over can drink beer, wine etc. with an older person present. Spirits gave to wait until 18 ( however there’s no penalty at any age for drinking at home ).
And really, identification of the self and certificates are generally a good thing, they settle one in civilisation — but most people throughout history had no written identification, or proof of anything, relying on other people vouching for them, and mostly, they got along fine.
Most of us are aware that the US has fairly strict drinking laws compared to much of the world. There are some places I’ve been to here in the US where it’s a completely no-exceptions policy. I watched someone well into his 60s being asked for ID at an airport bar and not being served, despite his protestations, until he produced his ID. I’m almost 42, bald, and in no way could pass for someone under 21, and I still get asked for ID about a quarter of the time I buy alcohol. (Though mostly in grocery stores, not in bars. Maybe one time out of fifty there, but I tend to go to bars where they know me.)
I listened to a Radio Lab podcast about a woman named Alecia Pennington who was born to kooky parents who isolated themselves from society. She was born in their house and the birth was never registered with any hospital or government agency, so there was no recorded proof she was born. The parents kept her isolated on the farm until she decided to flee in her teens. Once she was in society, she had a lot of problems trying to get into the system. Without official documents, she can’t get other documents like a driver’s license, voting card, etc. She didn’t have anything in her name to prove she had lived somewhere at some time, not even a library card. She was a person without any officially documented history.
She eventually got a birth certificate, but I can’t remember the exact details. She had to have statements from her sister(?) who was present at her birth and maybe a priest(?) who would swear they could confirm when and where she was born. Then she could get a birth certificate and other documents. But I think a state senator had to get involved to make it happen.
So for a marriage to someone with no documents, I would suspect the government would require the person to acquire the documents somehow.
Well, certainly in Britain I.D. is theoretically required from those under 18; there are notices in every such shop or pub — and it is a sour point that under-5-yr-olds cannot drink alcohol at home — and clubbing is a separate matter; but thing is, although I no longer go to pubs since they stopping smoking, I’ve never once heard an adult being challenged. One just goes to the bar and they serve whatever you want.
And in Australia it is the licensee’s choice what sort of I.D. to demand.
Clubbing:
*“Say I don’t like the look of you. If I’ve scanned in your ID, I could ban you not only from my club but, by sharing that data, from every nightclub in London. How the fuck is that not illegal? How are there not data protection issues with that?”
Alex Proud, owner of Proud Camden, has a reputation for being a bit opinionated and gobby, but this issue – the harvesting of personal data from clubbers, which is increasingly becoming mandatory for late night venues – has him firing words out with furious, spitfire precision.
“There are moments when everyone likes to have a bit of power,” he says. “But I’m not here to police society. I run a nightclub. It’s ludicrous that I’d be given that sort of power, and society doesn’t want me to have it.”*
…
*The seed for this particular criminalisation of drinkers and clubbers was sown in 2010 with The Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2010, which can require venues to ask patrons for identification.
“In other words, at the same time as the government was making a fanfare about repealing Labour’s ID Cards legislation, they were creating a special case of requiring the production of an official ID,” says Guy Herbert of privacy group NO2ID. “Not proof of age, note, specifically ‘identification’.”*
Your ID and proof of existence is a big long trail of accumulating evidence. Sure, your birth might not be registered - but you participate in society, so there’s school records, drivers license (from simpler times when no ID was required for that), employment history, a minister or such who can vouch for you, census records, houses you rented, credit cards, bank accounts, arrest records, medical records, etc. etc. It has become harder and harder to evade the traces of documentation in modern society - to avoid leaving a trail, to avoid the need for identification.
Eventually, as noted in Pennington’s story - you get affidavits from assorted people attesting that you are who you say; that have known you for a while, etc. Your story has to hold together. Then the court may issue a document that allows you to bootstrap your way to other documents, much as a birth certificate would. She was 19. Odds are anyone who is not either very young or very old would have a hard time making a case.
So the hypothetical time traveler? Well, sucks to be them. Either they make up a history, or they live off the grid. Not sure if you need to present ID to get a marriage license - presumably, some places just assume you are who you say, if you are taking a major step they would just take your word… Beyond that - there’s the old “take the name of an infant who died” trick; see the original Day Of The Jackal film; but lately, authorities have been collecting those names to preclude such a trick. they’re a lot more careful since 9-11. There’s buying a fake passport; as long as the passport isn’t provided to CBP at a border so they can scan the Serial Number with a computer, it will probably pass for everyone else. the real trick is getting the shiny holographic new type of passport. And so on…
(In the Jason Statham film “Parker”, Jennifer Lopez says to him “funny, but when I did a credit history, you didn’t exist until 6 months ago.”)
Jeez we had a guy at my work who was almost paperless. He moved to the west coast as a young man, and brought none of his ID with him, and began going by a new name, never bothering to change his name legally. I do not know the circumstances of his former life. I also don’t know what sort of ID he needed to get a job at our library, but he worked here for many years. Never had a state driver’s license or ID, passport, etc. All of this was not a problem in his day to day life, but then he retired and wanted to draw SS and the state pension he had acquired (he had no savings whatsoever). He had already quit when he ran up against the wall – he had no way to prove he was who he said he was, and SS and PERS wouldn’t pay him unless they had some kind of proof that he was the person who had paid into the accounts over the years. He actually had to come back to work for a month or two. I think he had to hire a lawyer to sort the mess out. We weren’t close so I don’t know all the details, but I remember thinking it was mighty odd in this day and age that a person had no trail of identification at all.