> Birth certificates are how we have proven citizenship in the United States almost since the founding of the Republic. In the late nineteenth and early twenti

> Birth certificates are how we have proven citizenship in the United States almost since the founding of the Republic. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not everyone had a birth certificate: between one-half and three-quarters of births in the United States went unregistered.[1] [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/44285276 https://www.jstor.org/stable/44285276