This post was originally published on coreyscottnaas.wordpress.com on 8 January 2018.
Well, I’ve always been a US citizen. The only thing that’s changed is that the United States Government recognizes it. I just got my passport.
Technically, I’ve always been able to prove my citizenship by producing my birth certificate, but that’s only because the United States Government recognizes state birth certificates as proof of citizenship. The United States Government did not give me that birth certificate. In the past, I’ve been able to use one or more of three things to prove my citizenship:
- Birth certificate: verifies I was born in the city of Kansas City, Missouri, at the hospital, time, and date printed on it. Issued by the City of Kansas City and recognized by the State of Missouri.
- Driver’s license: verifies that I am allowed to live in the United States, and licensed to drive from the State of Arkansas, verified through the existence of my birth certificate from the State of Missouri and the Social Security Number given to me by the Social Security Administration.
- Social Security Number: assigned to me after I was born and the hospital recorded my birth in their records and sent the information to the Social Security Administration so that they could assign a number to me. A SSN in and of itself is not proof of citizenship, as they can be assigned to noncitizens for various purposes, such as foreign workers approved to work in the US by the Department of Homeland Security.
Although there was no further information required aside from the above three for me to apply for my passport, the United States Passport is the end-all document that declares to anybody who would ask, including the United States Government itself, that I, Corey Scott Naas, am a citizen of the United States of America, and I have the all of the rights and responsibilities that are granted to me because of my place of birth (22 U.S. Code § 2705). Pretty cool.