The state department wants to make it more difficult to get a US passport...

If anything, the government is trying to stop the illegal birth holiday schemes, which generally attract rich foriegners who come over to the US to have a child. 

That what I got when I read: 10. What type of document, if any, did your mother use to enter into the United States before your birth?

Seems like a subtle attack on the 14th amendment 

And I must say this--I am NOT white yet I had zero problems at the US embassy last year when dealing with my missing passport. No grilling, no 'anchor-baby' questions, they didn't even look at the police report I had filed for my lost passport.  The only real question they had was 'oh, how come you have this old expired passport lying around?' To which I answered, 'it was mailed to me from the states', and they said, 'ah, ok'. I had my birth certificate, which they never even asked for, and an old expired passport.

It may not be possible now but we are moving in that direction. And it isn't necessarily some Gestapo/number of the beast sort of thing, just a natural flow towards incremental data uptake. As more and more data is collected it then makes sense to share it. Next thing you know you've got a DNA-matched chip in your wrist sending off a signal to a satellite. Marketing researchers will love it.

Of course, an adoptee with a home birth might run into problems, but if you were born in the hospital or were registered in a timely manner, you shouldn't have any more problems than someone who wasn't adopted.

That is patently not true. The State Department already says they will not accept an amended bc that is filed after a year (or just ones that look funny, like some tend to), and adoptees have already been denied driver's licenses and/or passports since REAL ID started coming into effect. The government wants the original. Well, sorry, 44 states won't allow access. They have now stated they will accept an adoption decree, but I don't know of anyone that's tried that yet. (And you have to do special things to get it.)


As for the other thing: Yeah, so maybe you can leave some of this blank. Personally, I'd have to leave mother's address, prenatal care blank, wouldn't have all my addresses, don't know my legal name for the first 6 months... How much can you leave blank? What's the cut off? When do they say "oh you didn't fill out enough"?

Maybe instead of asking for way too much information (way more than they should have) they should think about streamlining birth certificates and filing requirements, instead of having 50 different kinds and policies; giving equal access to that to all people; realise that women don't need men and technology to birth babies and adapt accordingly; and realise that things like religion and mass education are neither necessary nor always desirable.

Yeah, it will always be a pain to prove your identity if you don't have a birth certificate. They could start with making original birth certificate access a reality (and just do away with this whole sealing/amending thing, too). Then they can think about how 1984ish they want to be.

Besides the equal access part that really bothers me, the other main problem I have with this proposed requirement is the lack of clear guidelines around it. And the fact they think it'd take people an average of 45 minutes to do. Whoever came up with that number is clearly very privileged.

I'd feel more optimistic about this if I felt more optimistic about large amounts of data about private citizens that can be collected by a government and then possibly mishandled.  Look at the cases in the UK where data disks have been left on a train or lost in the mail. 

When I needed a copy of my birth certificate a few years ago, the register of births in my home state couldn't find my birth registered.  I insisted, and kept calling them for more than a month, and eventually they found it, apparently misfiled.  What if they hadn't found it?  Would I then have needed to tell them all about my parents' religious practices at my birth?  I think that's unconstitutional, a violation of the separation of church and state.

I think, too, that if an applicant can't answer all these intrusive questions, they might well feel intimidated and afraid that they wouldn't be able to get a passport.  It reminds me of the questions that African-Americans used to have to answer in the South in order to be able to vote.

It says right on the page you don't need to answer all the questions.

So no, you wouldn't have to provide any religious information.  

They are putting that on there because for some people, like the Amish, the only proof they will have is religious.

Have you ever seen the kind of "literacy tests" that were given to African-Americans before 1965?   (Here's a link:  http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm).
They were designed expressly to discourage people from voting.  Some had similar questions to this form -- like the one about listing all the jobs you'd ever had.  A long, detailed form like this can be used easily to intimidate people who are frightened that they can't answer all the questions asked, because they don't know which ones are crucial to the questioner.

Yes, I have.  Yes, I understand what you are saying.  All I am saying is that the form says you don't need to fill out all the questions.  

So we cut out the questions that refer to religion then how do the people who really only have access to religious documents know they can use them?  

This is going to apply to so few people anyway.  

If this is only going to be used for people who don't have a birth certificate and weren't registered within a year and not immigrants who have naturalisation papers then the question is how many people will it apply to?

Less than 1% (about .65%)  of all births in the US are home births.  I am sure most of those are registered since this includes not only planned home births, but accidental ones as well.  Most people who give birth at home probably aren't anti-gov't.  In fact, that number is for all out of hospital births, which also include birthing centers.

So we have a small subset of home births that aren't registered, mainly by fundamentalist or off grid type people.  

Then have some adoptees who have issues, I have no idea how many of those we might have issues.  Also, I suppose there are people whose birth certificates have been destroyed.  

What do we think we are talking about here?  Less than 1% of the population who might have an issue if those people decide they want a passport at all?  

As for concerns about the fact that poor minority women are more likely to be affected because they don't give birth in hospitals, the CDC does not agree.

Basically, older white women, which makes sense because they would have the money to afford to pay midwives and what-not.

The percentage of home births for non-Hispanic white women (0.86%) was about three times that for non-Hispanic black, American Indian, and Asian or Pacific Islander women (0.25–0.31%), and about four times that for Hispanic women (0.19%)(Table2).
Overall, 81% of home births were to non-Hispanic white women, comparedwith54%of hospital births(Figure3).Only8%ofhome births were to non-Hispanic black women, compared with 15% of hospital births. Hispanic women comprised 8% of home births and 25% of hospital births.
Maternal age—The percentage of home births was lowest for women aged 15–19 years (0.19%), and increased with increasing maternal age to a high of 1.41% for mothers aged 45 years and over

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_11.pdf

I'd feel more optimistic about this if I felt more optimistic about large amounts of data about private citizens that can be collected by a government and then possibly mishandled. 

I have to laugh at the thought that government doesn't already know this anyway.  You really think it would be that hard for them to find any of this information if they wanted to?  I think the "large" amounts of data we are talking about here is maybe 2-3 of the questions...possibly even 1 (I don't recall it specifying the exact number of questions that you would be required to answer if you fell into the very rare category of people who needed to use this method).

Also...I don't know how it would be classified as a violation of rights if there are several questions to choose from and you voluntarily give the information (meaning you could choose a question that doesn't "violate your rights" if you choose to).

I have a feeling, if this does ever pass, it would be like the DMV forms...where you have a long list of documents that you can provide to prove your residency and you get to pick which ones you take in.

That is patently not true. The State Department already says they will not accept an amended bc that is filed after a year (or just ones that look funny, like some tend to), and adoptees have already been denied driver's licenses and/or passports since REAL ID started coming into effect. The government wants the original. Well, sorry, 44 states won't allow access. They have now stated they will accept an adoption decree, but I don't know of anyone that's tried that yet. (And you have to do special things to get it.)

I had no problems getting my passport (either time) with my BC.  I was adopted between my 2nd and 3rd birthday.   It is no different than my non-adopted sisters' birth certificates, doesn't list my birth mother, and lists my step-mother as my mother.  My sister, however, had to go and get a short form because she tried to get her passport with her "original" (which isn't anything more than a memento for parents). [Edit: Although this might be because of how my birth state issues BCs to adoptees.] No one has their original birth certificate.

If this were ever an issue on renewal, I wouldn't see it as any more intrusive as the questions asked of USC children born overseas at the issue of their first passport.  

The irony over the race issue with this is my birth mother had four children before me.  They were all multi-racial, but only two of us have the potential for issues with this and it has absolutely nothing to do with our race.  We were just the two who were adopted after my mother's death.

If there's anything to compare to the poll tax here it would be the cost to get a passport in the first place.

ETA: And we should wait to see the new rules when and if they are implemented.  Until then, I am going to get worked up about speculation on what the new rules will be and what birth certificates will be accepted and what won't when I renew my passport.

Googling this, it seems that this has supposedly been an issue for people for 20+ years (yet always someone the poster knows or heard about).  If this is the case, then this might actually be a step to SIMPLIFY the process for adoptees who run into problems (supposedly).  I'd rather have the option to fill out the information to the best of my knowledge than to try to obtain my adoption records.  But I think this has been used as a way to appeal for legislation that will allow adoptees to access pre-adoption records (or in the very least get people sympathetic the "cause").  Supposedly, adoptees have had problems getting passports for so long, then why are so many of us getting passports and even newer enhanced IDs/licences with no problem?  Sorry, but I think this is about something totally different than having to answer questions before getting a passport. 

There might be very valid arguments in favour of opening these records to adoptees, but this is not one of them.  Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have my father tell me everything he knew about my birth mother and older half-siblings (all of the surviving I've talked to and almost all met in the past few years).  I feel extremely fortunate to have that connection to my birth family, and I think that there has to be another way to handle birth information in the States.  This isn't an argument in favour of that change though.

My brother had a hard time getting a passport because he didn't have a driver's license!

He had to provide all sorts of wonky proof of identity: old public school report cards, immunization records, library card, etc. I think my father even had to go in with him with his ID!

This was 7 years ago for what it's worth.

Knowing the kind of person he is, there is no way he keeps the kind of records that could answer any of the questions on that form. Also? What about people who work under the table? My brother does.

I just read the government website that gives the current passport requirements...and this pretty much already exist in a large capacity.

If you can't provide a certified birth certificate, filed within one year of your birth, here are the current options for Secondary Evidence of US Citizenship:

1)  submit an acceptable certified copy, 

If the birth certificate was filed more than one year after your birth,
2) submit a Delayed US Birth Certificate

If you have no previous passport or a certified US birth certificate of any kind,
3) submit Letter of No Record

If you can't do any of these, you would:
4) submit DS-10:  Birth Affidavit

Most of these need to be submitted with an Early Public Record (religious ceremony records, doctor's postnatal records, early school record, census, etc.).

I would imagine...if this new form ever came into existance...it would only be if none of the above mentioned Secondary Evidence of US Citizenship requirements could not be met.  This would probably affect like 100 people in the entirety of it's existance.

Seems like this is just another media stunt to get everyone in a tissy over nothing.  It sounds like this is actually being presented as an alternative to flat out denying people who aren't able to meet the current requirements.