Here is the 2009 settlement after the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of citizens denied passports

[pnwmom]

because the name of a suspect midwife or doctor was on their birth certificate.

At the end of the article there are links to the court documents.

https://www.aclu.org/news/state-department-agrees-fair-issuance-passports-mexican-americans

[Ms. Toad]

1. Now there's one I didn't expect when I first saw the story this morning.

I usually check dates and make sure the current atrocity is actually a current atrocity - I didn't check this one, which took place from 2003 - 2008. (i.e. it not Trump's atrocity)

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. WaPo sez it is happening again...now:

A 2009 government settlement in a case litigated by the American Civil Liberties Union seemed to have mostly put an end to the passport denials. Attorneys reported that the number of denials declined during the rest of the Obama administration, and the government settled promptly when people filed complaints after being denied passports.

But under President Trump, the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives.

“We’re seeing these kind of cases skyrocketing,” said Jennifer Correro, an attorney in Houston who is defending dozens of people who have been denied passports.

In its statement, the State Department said that applicants “who have birth certificates filed by a midwife or other birth attendant suspected of having engaged in fraudulent activities, as well as applicants who have both a U.S. and foreign birth certificate, are asked to provide additional documentation establishing they were born in the United States.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-is-denying-passports-to-americans-along-the-border-throwing-their-citizenship-into-question/2018/08/29/1d630e84-a0da-11e8-a3dd-2a1991f075d5_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.07e11f869793

[pnwmom]

4. Right. There was a settlement, and Obama was following it. But now Trump

has revived the practice.

Thanks for the link.

[Ms. Toad]

5. It still makes it another of those uncomfortable immigration situations

that grows out of our historical bad behavior toward brown people near the Mexican border that we were, unfotunately, mostly silent about when our team was in charge of it.

It is good to be outraged about it - it is, in fact, outrageous. But we need to acknowledge that this is not just an intolerable practice that the Trump administration started.

The Washington Post article at least acknowledges it is a longstanding practice.

I wish we had been better on immigration when we were in charge.

[pnwmom]

8. The practice ended in the first year of the Obama administration. So I don't see the evidence

that we'd been silent about it. From what I can see, it started in 2003, during Bush.

[Ms. Toad]

9. Did we talk about it at the time?

Did Obama end it voluntariliy, or was it a forced change (because of litigation/settlement)

Did we talk about it when it was Bush's policy?

I don't recall any discussions on it prior to this one - which is par for the course. People are becoming more aware of how atrocious the immigration system is - but few of the practices Trump is pushing are new. He may be pushing harder, but they have been bad for decades and it is shameful how little otherwise progressive people know about them.

[pnwmom]

10. Obama honored the settlement agreement, while Trump ignored it and resurrected the practice

with a vengeance. That seems like a pretty big difference to me.


It appears that the problem didn't get much attention till 2009 because it wasn't till 2009 that the law was changed to require passports for people crossing the Mexican/US border. Up till then birth certificates by themselves were enough. A lawsuit ensued and the new Obama administration settled.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-border-midwives-021009-2009feb10-story.html

[Ms. Toad]

11. My point isn't the response of the president to the settlement -

it is that we seem to have reserved special outrage for longstanding practices when they are brought to light becuase of our (appropriate) hypersensitivity to Trump's actions regarding immigration. These things were happening during the last several administrations - but we just didn't talk about them.

We should have been hypersenstitive all along. I (and others who have been working in immigration for decades) are glad we're finally waking up and being outraged. But I worry that we are ignoring our acquiesence to these same practices in the past (and will again, once we retake power).

[pnwmom]

12. Okay, I see what you're saying. But in this particular case I think part of the reason

Last edited Fri Aug 31, 2018, 07:25 PM - Edit history (1)

was that most people who lived near the border weren't in need of passports -- just like I never needed one to go to and from Canada.

So there wasn't a problem for many people, or an outcry, till the law was changed to require passports between the US and Mexico, and suddenly their birth certificates weren't acceptable -- which didn't happen till 2009.

[Ms. Toad]

14. Most people didn't need birth certificates to get their driver's license

until recently, either. And once they were required to vote, or the person moved to a different state that required a fresh start to obtain a driver's license (or now - all of us - with the Real ID) - way too many people (including people on DU) insisted that there wasn't anyone who would be unable to prove their citizenship. And many of us used this precise example (born at home, midwives) as one of the reasons that voter ID laws were discrimnatory - and were jeered into silence, mostly.

But now it is Trump, and passports - rather than driver's licenses - people on our side are belatedly realizing that this is a problem - ad was a problem even when our side had power.

[pnwmom]

15. I agree that voter ID laws are discriminatory, of course. That is their intention.

And what the DT administration is doing now is despicable.

[Ms. Toad]

16. But there were many people on DU who supported them when they were first proposed.

I argued until I was blue in the face that it was a discriminatory practice - expressly using births attended by midwives as an example of why. To say members of DU were rude would be an understatement. But NOW it is an outrage.

I'm just tired of things being an outrage when the other side does them, when we were silent about our side doing the same thing and (in the case of birth certificates for midwife births) we actively insisted it was a non-issue and shouted down anyone who said it was.

[pnwmom]

17. I'm sorry that happened -- I don't remember those arguments. Are you talking

about Voter ID requirements?

I don't support them. OTOH, I don't ever remember a time when driver's licenses didn't require a birth certificate, as you mentioned earlier. How else would they know if the holder was old enough to drive? (Or later, to buy alcohol?)

They DID accept all US birth certificates, though, without regard to who signed them. That's what changed at some point.

[Ms. Toad]

18. I never had to produce a birth certificate to get mine.

I apparently will this month, when our state moves to the "Real ID." But neither I nor my parents had a copy of my birth certificate until around 1986, 16 years after I obtained my school permit. I have no recollection of what was actually required, but since I could not have produced what I did not have, the state I lived in obviously did not require a copy of the birth certificate. (My parents had the ceremonial document recording my birth, but stamped all over it is a caution that it is not an official document). From the school permit through my current license, each new license has been piggy-backed off of the prior one.

People were a lot less fixated on documentation, even when I was growing up, than they are now - and I'm a generation younger than the generation that is hit hardest by voter ID laws. I didn't have a social security number until I was 12 and my parents started paying me to work on the farm (no birth certificate was required for that either). Most of my peers weren't paid by their parents - so their social security numbers likely weren't issued until they were in high shool and started working off the farm.

As to the prior conversations, here's one of the earlier, milder threads, from 2006:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x450630

I haven't found the right search terms for the wilder threads - but even though this one is mild, it is pretty easy to catch the condescending tone - insisting that you can't survive without a birth certificate, so it is not unreasonable to require one to vote.

As to Trump's policy, it is a short step from refusing to issue birth certificates for midwife births (as happened in the case of black births in the South) to refusing to issue them if the births were not timely registered (forcing some people who were born at home to go to court to create a birth certificate long after the birth because it was not registered in a timely fashion), to questioning the validity of a birth certificate because registration was not timely made.

[pnwmom]

19. It's been so long since I got the SS I don't remember what was required,

but I do remember bringing in my birth certificate to get my driver's license. HOWEVER I think they also allowed the hospital form (the kind with baby feet stamped on them), and even baptismal certificates. When we moved here in the 80's I needed two forms of ID to get a license -- my out of state license plus a birth certificate or a passport.

[pnwmom]

3. But this settlement was in 2009, after which the number of these situations

dropped dramatically, is what I've been hearing.

But now Trump seems to be ignoring the settlement -- so he is currently denying passports to US citizens, and barring some US citizens from coming back into the country.

[EleanorR]

6. Defendants-Condoleezza Rice... This was under bush

Settled after Obama took office. sheesh

[pnwmom]

7. Right. It was settled in 2009 and there were few incidents after that.

Then Trump suddenly started up the practice again, ignoring the settlement.

[moriah]

13. I see an issue they should have resolved then -- the "Suspect Birth Attendant" list...

... should have been released, so people who possessed birth certificates signed by them could start obtaining other documentary proof of legitimate birth that as time passes will only be harder to obtain.

And since the list now includes more than just midwives but doctors also accused, people whose birth certificate says they were born in a hospital aren't necessarily safe.