BBC Sherlock: In your shoes: Gen
Jun. 3rd, 2025 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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F'lessan and Tai talk about it.
In New York magazine this week, an article about how US citizens who have been detained by ICE can have an exceptionally difficult time proving that they they are, in fact, US citizens, or will have the ability to prove it before they are sent off to El Salvador or Rwanda or anywhere else in the world this embarrassment of an administration wants to unconstitutionally send people. And, while acknowledging the fact that it’s deeply unlikely I, a middle-aged white dude who lives in rural Ohio, will find myself attracting the attention of ICE in the first place, the article does raise a larger and sadly growingly more pertinent question: How many US citizens could, in fact, prove that they are US citizens at the drop of the hat? Leave aside for the moment the absolutely correct argument that it should not be incumbent on any of us to do so, and focus on this particular question. Can you, directly and/or indirectly, show that you have citizenship here in the US?
The gold standard physical proof of this would be an official birth certificate from within the United States (or naturalization certificate), followed by a valid US passport, followed by a REAL ID driver’s license. To obtain a US passport the first time, you need that official birth certificate or a US naturalization or citizenship certificate. For the REAL ID license here in Ohio, where I live, you need proof of US citizenship (passport or birth certificate) and a social security number, proof of Ohio residency, and, if your name has changed due to marriage or other reasons, legal proof of the name change, from a marriage license or a court-ordered name change.
So: Can you quickly lay hands on an official copy of your birth certificate? Do you now have — or indeed have you ever had — a valid US passport? Do you have a REAL ID-compliant drivers license/state ID card? Do you know your Social Security number (or have access to the physical card itself)? If you’ve ever changed your name, do you have ready access to your marriage license and/or court documents approving that name change?
These are not trivial questions, since in 2024, the Brennan Center noted that over 21 million US citizens of voting age don’t have ready access to documents proving their citizenship, and that the percentage of minority US citizens without these documents is higher than the percentage of white citizens. When the rubber hits the road, nearly ten percent of US citizens can’t easily prove they are citizens. These include some of the people most vulnerable to “accidental” deportation from this country — and I put “accidental” in quotes here because it’s been made very clear that this particular administration doesn’t see deporting US citizens, particularly ones of color, as an actual problem.
Ask yourself whether you have ready access to these sorts of documents, starting with the most critical of these: a legal copy of your birth certificate. If the answer is “no,” then for your own safety (not to mention your ability to vote, which is also pretty important), it might be an excellent time to go about getting those documents and storing them somewhere safe. For the moment, the CDC has a page that can help you find official records in the various US states and territories, and there are also third party companies who can help you locate and obtain various records here in the US. Will any of this cost you money? Of course it will, this is America! But then you will have them, and that’s a good thing.
Personally, if you’re a US citizen, I strongly recommend getting a US passport, including the US passport card (I’ll explain why below). Get them for identification purposes, even if you don’t have immediate plans to travel outside of the US.
Let’s turn these questions back to me, since I am exhorting all y’all to have these documents at the ready. Do I have any/all of these documents ready to go?
In fact, yes. I have a certified copy of my birth certificate in a fireproof lock box. I have a current passport — indeed I renewed it last year, just before the change of administration, in order to avoid any delays due to intentional or inflicted incompetence on the part of the State Department — and I have had a REAL ID for several years, since I saw no benefit in not getting that as soon as possible.
I don’t typically keep my US passport with me when I travel domestically (it stays in the lockbox with the birth certificate), but I do have a US passport card in my wallet at all times, which aside from being useful for land crossings to Mexico and Canada, also “is proof of U.S. citizenship and identity” according to our own State Department (and is also the equivalent of a REAL ID for US domestic air travel purposes). Importantly, the REAL ID Ohio driver’s license which also lives in my wallet is not proof of US citizenship, “just” of legal US residency. So I keep both the passport card and my REAL ID drivers license on me when I leave the house.
Will any of this keep an ICE stooge from looking at one’s various forms of ID and deciding they are fake? Nope! That said, having both a REAL ID and a passport card makes it that much harder for such absolute bullshit to stick after the fact (also, memorize your Social Security number). Do I resent that I live in a time and place where having two forms of ID on me at all times, including one that explicitly tags me as a US citizen, is just about required? Sure do, although this is tempered by the fact that I was doing this anyway, long before it was a defensive posture against my own federal government.
Again, I am white middle-aged dude, and live in rural Ohio, so the chances of ICE getting up in my face about anything is pretty damn low. But if they did, and decided the forms of ID I had on me were fake and tossed me into ICE detention, what else do I have going for me? Well, as noted, I have those other forms of ID in the lockbox. I also have provably US citizen parents, both of whom are still living, complete with birth certificates of their own. Their parents were also provably US citizens. I suspect three full generations of provable US citizenship would be difficult for even this administration to brush aside.
(And before that? Well, everyone came over before (European) immigration quotas and controls were a thing. I have relatives here on the North American continent going back to the 1640s, which is to say, long before the racist-ass current president’s progenitors hied their sorry hides over from the mother country. Which to be clear ought not to fucking matter, as regards US citizenship. But here we are in 2025.)
The other thing I have going for me is that I am, well, me: both well-enough off financially that I could mount a reasonable legal defense, and well-known enough that if ICE actually tried to disappear me, bluntly, it would be noticed by more than my immediate family. Heck, my birthplace is in my Wikipedia article (and even if some troll changes that now, the article history will show it). This doesn’t mean my life wouldn’t be miserable before I got sprung, mind you. Just that it would be difficult for this administration to credibly argue they didn’t know what they were doing before they attempted to ship this particular US citizen into some extranational hole.
Again, at this point, I do not see ICE or anyone else trying to expel me from our national borders. I am, statistically and otherwise, as safe as anyone in the US can be from the unconstitutional fuckery being perpetrated at the moment by our federal government. Also, in the current “show me your papers, no these papers are fake” environment, “safe as anyone in the US can be” is not actually safe at all, especially with an administration that is clearly contemptuous of the US Constitution and the protections it affords not only our nation’s citizens, but everyone who is on our soil. If anyone here lacks constitutional protections, we all lack them; our “rights” exist at the whim of bad people.
For all that, if you’re a US citizen, you should have ready access to your documentation. If you don’t have your birth certificate on hand, get a certified copy of it. If you don’t have a passport, get one, including the passport card. And yes, spring for the REAL ID. We don’t exist in the just world where these don’t matter for your personal security. In the world in which we exist, they are useful to have.
— JS
Women's higher education in London dates from the late 1840s, with the foundation of Bedford College by the Unitarian benefactor, Elisabeth Jesser Reid. Bedford was initially a teaching institution independent of the University of London, which was itself an examining institution, established in 1836. Over the next three decades, London University examinations were available only to male students.
Demands for women to sit examinations (and receive degrees) increased in the 1860s. After initial resistance a compromise was reached.
In August 1868 the University announced that female students aged 17 or over would be admitted to the University to sit a new kind of assessment: the 'General Examination for Women'.
Sexism in science: 7 women whose trailblazing work shattered stereotypes. Yeah, we note that this was over 100 years since the ladies sitting the University of London exams, and passing.
***
A couple of recent contributions from Campop about employment issues in the past:
Who was self-employed in the past?:
It is often assumed that industrial Britain, with its large factories and mines employing thousands of people, left little space for individuals running their own businesses. But not everyone was employed as a worker for others. Some exercised a level of agency operating on their own as business proprietors, even if they were also often very constrained.
Over most of the second half of the 19th century as industrialisation accelerated, the self-employed remained a significant proportion of the population – about 15 percent of the total economically active. It was only in the mid-20th century that the proportion plummeted to around eight percent.
Home Duties in the 1921 Census:
What women in ‘home duties’ were precisely engaged in still remains a mystery, reflecting the regular obstruction of women’s everyday activity from the record across history. For some, surely ‘home duties’ reflected hard physical labour (particularly in washing), as well as hours of childcare exceeding the length of the factory day. For others, particularly the aspirational bourgeois, the activities of “home duties” involved little actual housework. 5.1 percent of wives in home duties had servants to assist them, a rate which doubled for clerks’ wives to 11.7 percent. For them, household “work” involved little physical action. Though this may have given some of these women the opportunity to spend their hours in cultural activities or socialising, for others it possibly reflected crushing boredom.
***
And on informal contributions, Beyond Formal and Informal: Giving Back Political Agency to Female Diplomats in Early Nineteenth Century Europe:
[H]istorians such as Jeroen Duindam show that there were never explicitly separate spheres for men and women when working for the state in the early nineteenth-century. Drawing a line separating ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ diplomats in the early nineteenth-century, simply based on their gender alone, does not do these women justice.
And I am very happy to see this receiving recognition, though how far has something which got reprinted after 30 years be considered languishing in obscurity, huh? as opposed to having created a persistent fanbase: A Matter of Oaths – Helen Wright.
What went before One: Yanno? I'm finished for the day. No, I don't have a localer doctor. None of the doctors that are less than 50 miles away are taking new patients, which isn't surprising, really. I have my name on a "Hub" list, which I'm going to have to count as . . . a winnish sort of outcome.
Waiting for the plumber and will be going to Reny's and to Hannaford after that window closes.
What went before Two: I keep forgetting that if you want something today, you don't go to a store for it.
So the plumber came by and fixed the toilet situation. I gotta get me one of those air-harpoons. I went to Staples, because I wanted an SD card that cost less than the Earth today, then to Home Despot, which also did not have what I wanted. I will now be buying these items online.
I have newly washed clothes to put away and socks to dry, Coon Cat Happy Hour to serve up, and a glass of wine to find. Maybe two glasses of wine. Three? It could happen.
Everybody stay safe; I'll see you tomorrow.
Tuesday. Sunny and gonna be warm. Trash and recycling at the curb. Windows OPEN in my office.
Breakfast was rice crackers with cream cheese, strawberries on the side, putting the kettle on for my second cup of tea.
Laundry's almost done. I need to clear the dishwasher and change out at least one cat fountain, do my Greater Duty to the cats, and also do some banking/accounting. I should go to sewing circle this evening so I don't get out of the habit, and! going will force me to choose new project from those I have on-hoard. Oh, and I promised the guy at Houle's I'd stop by the showroom today.
Busy, busy.
One of the ... remarkable -- because I'm about to remark upon it -- aspects of coming home is how pleased I am to have My Own Stuff around me. And while I was Right to take a "studio" at Corning, and Corel dishes are perfectly reasonable, it was almost an active pleasure this morning to reach into the cabinet and pull out a proper purple-glazed dessert plate for my crackers, and the right little bowl for the strawberries.
So, that's what's going on around here -- I still have way too much Stuff to do, but I can kind of see a glimmer, looking forward, which might be what I like to call Normalcy.
Today's blog post title courtesy of Fleetwood Mac, "I don't wanna know"
Three cats in my office; one in the dining room, adjacent to my office, sitting in my chair. Of course.