The irony of it! I helped my daughter get her U.S. passport years ago when she was joining a ballet company in Florida. It took a lot of proving that I was her mother since I had registered her birth years after she was born and that, according to the U.S. Embassy, is a big red flag.
I had to provide documentation of my own residency in the States (I am a native New Yorker who lived in NYS from birth to marriage) which meant digging out my old elementary and high school report cards, my university transcripts, elementary class pictures with me in them, baptismal certificate, letters, employment records, diplomas and college degrees.
I only needed 10 years' worth, but I brought everything I could find about myself and let them tell me which papers they preferred. For my daughter I had to provide documentation in the form of photos, kiddie artwork, school records, etc. to prove that she really was my daughter. I brought them a pile of stuff, including pictures of her birth at home. I assembled a photo album with pictures from each year of her life from birth to the day of the interview.
They really put me through the wringer, even scolding me for not immediately registering her birth. (In my defense, the births of the four siblings who were born before her were attended by homebirth doctors who did the birth registration for us, so that is what I was used to.)
The day she received her passport and social security card felt like a big victory.
Now, many years later, I need a US passport - damn terrorists - just to visit my mother. And guess what? I need my daughter, as a U.S. citizen, to identify me in order to fulfill the requirements for obtaining it! Yes, the same daughter who needed me to identify her!
U.S. post-9/11 bureaucracy in action. It's either to laugh or to cry.
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