Becoming a non-person in Texas

A few years ago, a couple of midwives in south Texas confessed up that they forged about 15,000 birth certificates.  Homeland Security, fearing someone might slip through the cracks (God Forbid!) is determined to make life difficult.  For people like Juan Aranda, a life-long resident of Weslaco this is more than just an inconvenience:

His birth certificate says he was delivered unto Weslaco 38 years ago, and church records say he was baptized here soon after. School files list him as a student in the local district from kindergarten through high school, and voter rolls show he votes for president here.

But to the U.S. State Department…isn’t sure he’s an American.

Miriam Jordan, 11-08-2008 Wall Street Journal

Not a big deal?  Think again:

…locals need a valid passport more than ever. A new law that goes into effect next year requires Americans to use a passport, rather than just a birth certificate or driver’s license, to visit Mexico and Canada. The situation threatens to isolate thousands of people in the Rio Grande Valley who regularly travel back and forth to Mexico for work or family reasons.

At least one Border Patrol agent is among the people who need a passport for their job, but can’t “prove” they are American citizens to the satisfaction of the passport office.

Not having a birth certificate isn’t all that uncommon, though it’s fairly rare now.  My father was either never issued a birth certificate in 1917, or it was never found (his home county courthouse burned down in the 1930s).  A baptismal certificate was enough to obtain his passport in the 1970s.  But he was born in Pennsylvania, not south Texas. And that was in the days when the United States was still a free country without government surveillance of its citizens.

South Texas, or at least south Texans with a year-round tan, are not the same as other American citizens, at least according to the Homeland Security regime. At Weslaco’s Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Church:

Eva Gonzalez, the church secretary, says that she has been issuing baptism records at the rate of 30 a week for passport applicants. “I have people coming in here crying,” she says. “Ladies are saying, ‘I was born here and have lived here all my life, but the government doesn’t believe me.’ ” Ms. Gonzalez’s own mother, who was delivered by a midwife 75 years ago, is among those caught in the confusion. She says federal agents also visited recently to inspect church ledgers for fraud.

That’s typical for what you get in the age of Patriot Acts …  don’t trust the people, don’t trust the churches, don’t trust nobody.