Reply to How many DC residents do not have ID cards of some sort?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Probably thousands.

There are plenty of older folks who were born in the rural south who are living in DC now and may not have ever had a birth certificate.[/quote]

How did they get to DC? How do they get a social security check? How do they rent? [/quote]

Many came to DC in search of educational opportunities for their children. They took the train, the bus, or came with other people by car. Imagine, for example, a SAHM who never drove. Any social security that she has would be based on her husband’s income and SS# . She might still live in the family home — a house that was purchased by her husband.  Many people of a certain age were paid in cash and don’t qualify for social security benefits which, originally were deliberately crafted to leave out jobs that were disproportionately held by Black people.

Maybe go read up on the Great Migration.

[/quote]

The Great Migration was 100 years ago.  There is no one collecting social security based on their husband who doesn't have their own SS#.  Sorry... even in the 30s when Social Security was created and your point was actually true, the government made all sorts of accommodations... you could bring in a church document, you could bring in your mom or a sibling or a friend to verify your birth.  They swore an affidavit and they gave you a SS#.  We now fall over ourselves to accept documents from every country in the world.  There is no one who can't get an ID if they want one.

Are there homeless and mentally ill people who have lost the card, sure?  But even most of them receive SSI, so yes, someone is holding their paperwork.  [/quote]

The Great Migration ended around 197O — So widen your range a bit.  No one has said that you “can’t” get an ID. Many of us have said that it can be expensive and difficult and a major hurdle for people who do not have birth certificates. The extreme difficulties are less about people who had these documents and lost them and more about people who never had them in the first place.

[/quote]

Post 911 it took 2 years to get my mother a birth certificate including all of us flying to the state she was born in to discuss the issue in person. She could not renew her driver's license without updating her paperwork. She never had a birth certificate and never needed one. Lots of people from the state she was born in had the same problem  It affected her  medical insurance and caused problems when she needed surgery. Two years. Her family had lived in her birth state for 100 years and was known. She lived in the house I grew up in for 40 years. She wasn't homeless or an immigrant. She was an American citizen who grew up in a time and place where being born at home wasn't unusual. She filled out all the paperwork and had called many times. They would never process her paperwork. Two years from the time she submitted the paperwork and they only completed it after we complained to the representative there. [/quote]

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