5 ms·

For reference, the US has procedures for this: https://www.usa.gov/citizenship-no-birth-certificate https://www.usa.gov/citizenship-no-birth-certificate because

For reference, the US has procedures for this: https://www.usa.gov/citizenship-no-birth-certificate https://www.usa.gov/citizenship-no-birth-certificate because people without birth certificates are still somewhat common, even children. Vermont didn't require it until 1955!

thatguy27 1y ago
So does South Africa. However, capable administrators are severely lacking.
- mothballed 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - afavour 1y ago
    If I was looking to cite evidence that South Africa has a racist past I'm not sure stadium chants would be my _first_ example...
    - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
      One of the main figures lionized in that song (which is an anti-colonialist chant to be clear) is a white guy, Joe Slovo. These people are unserious.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        Joe Slovo isn't Boer; of course he has no problem with Kill the Boer as he allied himself with the ANC againts the Boer. Being white doesn't excuse you from tribalism/racism.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Tribalism is not when you colonize a country and terrorize the former residents from centuries. Tribalism is when your multi-racial coalition pens a song expressing their rage at said terror. I understand now, priors updated.
        FredPret 1y ago
        Are you familiar with South Africa? There's at least a dozen different tribes, of which only two are white. There's been inter-tribal violence between all of them since time immemorial leading up to today.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Are you? Because I don't know a single South African who would describe historical intertribal violence and Dutch colonialism and apartheid as basically the same thing.
        FredPret 1y ago
        Your argument was "there's no tribalism except what the whites brought to South Africa", remember? And elsewhere you say that because of this, violence against white South Africans are justified. This is not only insane, but simply historically incorrect. I'm going to stop replying to you now (apparently there's a "HN Blocklist" Chrome addon!) but feel free to keep justifying calls for political and ethnic violence. It should make interesting reading for others in the decades to come.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        > replies to my comment > gets a bunch of basic facts wrong > stomps off, hits block button The apartheid fans are not bringing their best I'm afraid.
        antonvs 1y ago
        > The apartheid fans are not bringing their best I'm afraid. Oh believe me, they are.
      - FredPret 1y ago
        It's "anti-colonialist" in the sense that it encourages the mass murder of the descendants of the original colonialists. I don't know the US well enough to give you an exact equivalent, but "shoot the WASP" might be more or less the same thing. It wouldn't be any better if the same song sang the praises of a white member of the Weather Underground.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Save me the pearl clutching. The song was penned by people living directly under the thumb of those poor innocent descendants and waging an active battle for their freedom. You'd even deny them their rage against those directly culpable for their oppression.
        FredPret 1y ago
        Poor innocent descendants -> I did not call them poor, or innocent. Deny rage -> of course not. I'd be furious too. But singing songs like "bring my machine gun" and "shoot people from that ethnic group" just aren't justified, especially since South Africa has been a democracy for decades now.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Who are you to say what is justified?
        FredPret 1y ago
        Moral relativism at its finest. Turn away now, because this is a dead end my friend. "ethnic cleansing is justified if the violence goes the way I prefer" is the red flag of all red flags.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
  - tartuffe78 1y ago
    I feel like there is some other racism South Africa might be infamous for...
  - MSFT_Edging 1y ago
    Actual race-based apartheid ended 9 years after the first Windows release. The Boer in question were the people enforcing apartheid for generations. They're also still the majority land-owners in South Africa due to the apartheid system. As of 2017 it was around 73% of Agricultural land owned by the beneficiaries of Apartheid. I'm sorry but you can't just cry foul when your racism record setting attempt falls apart in the age of the internet and the victims hold a grudge.
afavour 1y ago
> South Africans coming forward are being treated with suspicion that they are an illegal immigrant I can't help but wonder if similar concerns will appear in the US, if they haven't already.
- wat10000 1y ago
  It's already worse than that. There are multiple stories of US citizens being detained just because they look Hispanic, which the authorities have decided means they look like illegal immigrants, and then accused of presenting fake IDs when they try to prove otherwise.
throwaway48476 1y ago
The Amish have a social security exemption.
- BrandoElFollito 1y ago
  What kind of exemption? (I am French so I may understand Social Security in the US wrong)
  - mothballed 1y ago
    They can choose not to get a social security number like anyone else, but the real exception is that they can take a religious exemption to paying social security while basically most everyone else who is of a religious organization objecting to social security past X date (I think around 1960 from memory) cannot ( I suspect this is unconstitutional religious discrimination against later forming religious groups, if I were rich I'd challenge it). However there are a couple other groups -- preachers can exempt themselves as can members of the railroad and a few other industries that have been heavily entwined with government and provide their own pension plan.
nostrademons 1y ago
My dad was born in the Philippines in 1939. He came over to the U.S. on a Taiwanese passport in 1959, part of a group of students that MIT imported from the Philippines based on letters of recommendation from their Atomic Energy Commission, and then bounced around on various visas for a decade. Finally got citizenship upon marrying my mom in 1971. When McCain was running for president, there was a big court case about whether being born in the Canal Zone (a U.S. territory) qualified as being a "natural born citizen". And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?" Moot point by then, he'd already been a citizen for ~40 years, and died the next year. But it was wild to think that the 10+ years of immigration hassles were basically due to an administrative fuck-up, and that legally, he should have had citizenship all along. The process you link wouldn't work for him, either, because the Philippines is not a U.S. territory now.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  >And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?" Unless your dad was part of the elite ruling class which gets to skip and ignore all the rules, the answer is an emphatic no. However, if he was the son of an admiral from a long line of important people who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president, well, then Congress might just decide that he's good enough and give their stamp of approval to all of it. Was your dad the son of an admiral who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president? Besides, the thing with McCain wasn't about whether he was a citizen or not... this was 100% the case. The trouble was that McCain didn't become a citizen until 3 years old. And "natural born citizen" can't happen for a kid who's already 3, nor can Congress pass laws that are ex post facto, meaning they couldn't retroactively declare him natural born. He was absolutely disqualified from running, and if he had had an ounce of decency he would have accepted that and quit pressing his claims.
  - wbl 1y ago
    McCain was the child of two citizen parents and thus a citizen at birth.
e40 1y ago
For now. I'm not being snarky or hyperbolic. Today's Daily pod is related. I'm half way through and no mention of voting yet, but it takes no imagination to see where this is going. Remember the whole "Obama wasn't a citizen" thing? Remember the "illegal aliens elected Joe Biden?" The best way to disenfranchise a segment of the population is to give them difficulty proving they are citizens, so they cannot vote. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-rights-dei.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-righ... The guest of this pod is the creator of the 1619 project and she is against DEI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
- epistasis 1y ago
  The creation of stateless people during WW2, those without passports or birth certificates or citizenship, was a clear path towards the Holocaust. And the same tactic is used to this day to perpetrate genocide around the world. Mass deportations, elimination of legal status, all these things tend towards one very very scary direction throughout history. And you know what they say about people who do not know the history... (Just going to ignore the DEI comment because I don't know how that relates to anything here...)
  - e40 1y ago
    DEI is discussed at length in the podcast and is the excuse for rolling back civil rights.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
alexpotato 1y ago
Isn't there a similar mechanism but for the case where you lost ALL of your documents e.g. in a house fire. IIRC, you need a couple of people to sign affidavits that affirm you are who you say you are. That's the start of the "paper trail" and then you start rebuilding your document pool. Getting married and changing your last name is similar (although with fewer documents etc).
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  Consider the case of foreign-born Americans living overseas who have lost all of their documents get new US documents. How does the US government distinguish them from a random person in that country impersonating the same? It is more involved than just affidavits. The US uses databases on every citizen, some not formally acquired, that can be used to "duck type" individual identity. An affidavit is primarily used to bootstrap the entity resolution process. With only a couple touch points they can reconstruct identity with high probability. It may feel like a "trust me bro" process but it really isn't. It is related to how the provided information on credit applications is not used to inform the creditor. They already have access to all of this information and are more interested in if your representation matches what they already know.
jandrewrogers 1y ago
Some members of my family have no record of birth or formal existence until they were quite old. Obligations on parents to generate that paper trail exist now but there are still many ways people can fall into the cracks. The US has generally been far more accommodating of Americans without documentation out of necessity than I think people realize. Some parents choose this for their children, either intentionally or through negligence, and those children need a way to bootstrap their documentation as adults. There was a large contingent of Americans born outside the US to American parents in the aftermath of WW2 that frequently had little or no documentation.
atmavatar 1y ago
Before segregation ended, it was relatively common for hospitals to turn away pregnant black women, ultimately forcing them to use midwives instead. Those born via midwives often were not issued birth certificates, so many black Americans have none. Consequently, that's also why Republicans push so hard for voter ID laws.
antonvs 1y ago
1955 was 70 years ago, it doesn’t seem that surprising.

thatguy27 1y ago

So does South Africa. However, capable administrators are severely lacking.

mothballed 1y ago
[flagged]
- afavour 1y ago
  If I was looking to cite evidence that South Africa has a racist past I'm not sure stadium chants would be my _first_ example...
  - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
    One of the main figures lionized in that song (which is an anti-colonialist chant to be clear) is a white guy, Joe Slovo. These people are unserious.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Joe Slovo isn't Boer; of course he has no problem with Kill the Boer as he allied himself with the ANC againts the Boer. Being white doesn't excuse you from tribalism/racism.
      - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Tribalism is not when you colonize a country and terrorize the former residents from centuries. Tribalism is when your multi-racial coalition pens a song expressing their rage at said terror. I understand now, priors updated.
        FredPret 1y ago
        Are you familiar with South Africa? There's at least a dozen different tribes, of which only two are white. There's been inter-tribal violence between all of them since time immemorial leading up to today.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Are you? Because I don't know a single South African who would describe historical intertribal violence and Dutch colonialism and apartheid as basically the same thing.
        FredPret 1y ago
        Your argument was "there's no tribalism except what the whites brought to South Africa", remember? And elsewhere you say that because of this, violence against white South Africans are justified. This is not only insane, but simply historically incorrect. I'm going to stop replying to you now (apparently there's a "HN Blocklist" Chrome addon!) but feel free to keep justifying calls for political and ethnic violence. It should make interesting reading for others in the decades to come.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        > replies to my comment > gets a bunch of basic facts wrong > stomps off, hits block button The apartheid fans are not bringing their best I'm afraid.
        antonvs 1y ago
        > The apartheid fans are not bringing their best I'm afraid. Oh believe me, they are.
    - FredPret 1y ago
      It's "anti-colonialist" in the sense that it encourages the mass murder of the descendants of the original colonialists. I don't know the US well enough to give you an exact equivalent, but "shoot the WASP" might be more or less the same thing. It wouldn't be any better if the same song sang the praises of a white member of the Weather Underground.
      - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Save me the pearl clutching. The song was penned by people living directly under the thumb of those poor innocent descendants and waging an active battle for their freedom. You'd even deny them their rage against those directly culpable for their oppression.
        FredPret 1y ago
        Poor innocent descendants -> I did not call them poor, or innocent. Deny rage -> of course not. I'd be furious too. But singing songs like "bring my machine gun" and "shoot people from that ethnic group" just aren't justified, especially since South Africa has been a democracy for decades now.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        Who are you to say what is justified?
        FredPret 1y ago
        Moral relativism at its finest. Turn away now, because this is a dead end my friend. "ethnic cleansing is justified if the violence goes the way I prefer" is the red flag of all red flags.
        femiagbabiaka 1y ago
- tartuffe78 1y ago
  I feel like there is some other racism South Africa might be infamous for...
- MSFT_Edging 1y ago
  Actual race-based apartheid ended 9 years after the first Windows release. The Boer in question were the people enforcing apartheid for generations. They're also still the majority land-owners in South Africa due to the apartheid system. As of 2017 it was around 73% of Agricultural land owned by the beneficiaries of Apartheid. I'm sorry but you can't just cry foul when your racism record setting attempt falls apart in the age of the internet and the victims hold a grudge.

afavour 1y ago

> South Africans coming forward are being treated with suspicion that they are an illegal immigrant I can't help but wonder if similar concerns will appear in the US, if they haven't already.

wat10000 1y ago
It's already worse than that. There are multiple stories of US citizens being detained just because they look Hispanic, which the authorities have decided means they look like illegal immigrants, and then accused of presenting fake IDs when they try to prove otherwise.

throwaway48476 1y ago

The Amish have a social security exemption.

BrandoElFollito 1y ago
What kind of exemption? (I am French so I may understand Social Security in the US wrong)
- mothballed 1y ago
  They can choose not to get a social security number like anyone else, but the real exception is that they can take a religious exemption to paying social security while basically most everyone else who is of a religious organization objecting to social security past X date (I think around 1960 from memory) cannot ( I suspect this is unconstitutional religious discrimination against later forming religious groups, if I were rich I'd challenge it). However there are a couple other groups -- preachers can exempt themselves as can members of the railroad and a few other industries that have been heavily entwined with government and provide their own pension plan.

nostrademons 1y ago

My dad was born in the Philippines in 1939. He came over to the U.S. on a Taiwanese passport in 1959, part of a group of students that MIT imported from the Philippines based on letters of recommendation from their Atomic Energy Commission, and then bounced around on various visas for a decade. Finally got citizenship upon marrying my mom in 1971. When McCain was running for president, there was a big court case about whether being born in the Canal Zone (a U.S. territory) qualified as being a "natural born citizen". And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?" Moot point by then, he'd already been a citizen for ~40 years, and died the next year. But it was wild to think that the 10+ years of immigration hassles were basically due to an administrative fuck-up, and that legally, he should have had citizenship all along. The process you link wouldn't work for him, either, because the Philippines is not a U.S. territory now.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
>And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?" Unless your dad was part of the elite ruling class which gets to skip and ignore all the rules, the answer is an emphatic no. However, if he was the son of an admiral from a long line of important people who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president, well, then Congress might just decide that he's good enough and give their stamp of approval to all of it. Was your dad the son of an admiral who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president? Besides, the thing with McCain wasn't about whether he was a citizen or not... this was 100% the case. The trouble was that McCain didn't become a citizen until 3 years old. And "natural born citizen" can't happen for a kid who's already 3, nor can Congress pass laws that are ex post facto, meaning they couldn't retroactively declare him natural born. He was absolutely disqualified from running, and if he had had an ounce of decency he would have accepted that and quit pressing his claims.
- wbl 1y ago
  McCain was the child of two citizen parents and thus a citizen at birth.

e40 1y ago

For now. I'm not being snarky or hyperbolic. Today's Daily pod is related. I'm half way through and no mention of voting yet, but it takes no imagination to see where this is going. Remember the whole "Obama wasn't a citizen" thing? Remember the "illegal aliens elected Joe Biden?" The best way to disenfranchise a segment of the population is to give them difficulty proving they are citizens, so they cannot vote. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-rights-dei.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-righ... The guest of this pod is the creator of the 1619 project and she is against DEI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project

epistasis 1y ago
The creation of stateless people during WW2, those without passports or birth certificates or citizenship, was a clear path towards the Holocaust. And the same tactic is used to this day to perpetrate genocide around the world. Mass deportations, elimination of legal status, all these things tend towards one very very scary direction throughout history. And you know what they say about people who do not know the history... (Just going to ignore the DEI comment because I don't know how that relates to anything here...)
- e40 1y ago
  DEI is discussed at length in the podcast and is the excuse for rolling back civil rights.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

alexpotato 1y ago

Isn't there a similar mechanism but for the case where you lost ALL of your documents e.g. in a house fire. IIRC, you need a couple of people to sign affidavits that affirm you are who you say you are. That's the start of the "paper trail" and then you start rebuilding your document pool. Getting married and changing your last name is similar (although with fewer documents etc).

jandrewrogers 1y ago
Consider the case of foreign-born Americans living overseas who have lost all of their documents get new US documents. How does the US government distinguish them from a random person in that country impersonating the same? It is more involved than just affidavits. The US uses databases on every citizen, some not formally acquired, that can be used to "duck type" individual identity. An affidavit is primarily used to bootstrap the entity resolution process. With only a couple touch points they can reconstruct identity with high probability. It may feel like a "trust me bro" process but it really isn't. It is related to how the provided information on credit applications is not used to inform the creditor. They already have access to all of this information and are more interested in if your representation matches what they already know.

jandrewrogers 1y ago

Some members of my family have no record of birth or formal existence until they were quite old. Obligations on parents to generate that paper trail exist now but there are still many ways people can fall into the cracks. The US has generally been far more accommodating of Americans without documentation out of necessity than I think people realize. Some parents choose this for their children, either intentionally or through negligence, and those children need a way to bootstrap their documentation as adults. There was a large contingent of Americans born outside the US to American parents in the aftermath of WW2 that frequently had little or no documentation.

atmavatar 1y ago

Before segregation ended, it was relatively common for hospitals to turn away pregnant black women, ultimately forcing them to use midwives instead. Those born via midwives often were not issued birth certificates, so many black Americans have none. Consequently, that's also why Republicans push so hard for voter ID laws.

antonvs 1y ago

1955 was 70 years ago, it doesn’t seem that surprising.