Gwyneth Barbara was surprised when, on April 16 of this year, she received a query in response to the passport application she had submitted just a month before. Barbara, who asked that Rewire.News not use her last name, was born in the United States—in her parents’ Kansas farmhouse, to be exact. The letter Barbara received from the U.S. Passport Agency said that because she was born outside of an institution, her birth certificate was not enough to prove her citizenship.
In a recent phone interview with Rewire.News, Barbara explained that her father was actually the one who caught her as she was delivered, with the assistance of a couple of lay midwives. As a child, she said, “I was told the story of my dad going to the courthouse to fill out the birth certificate, and they were all excited and bubbly. He was the talk of the courthouse.”
For decades, Barbara has successfully used that birth certificate to renew her driver’s license, and even to receive a prior passport. But this letter requested additional documentation to prove her citizenship.
[For more on this story by Miriam Zoila Pérez, go to https://rewire.news/article/20...alating-under-trump/]
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