My first job out of college was with a county health department in South Carolina, and in 1977 I was tasked with writing a system to print birth certificates. Computer files from the state were sent to the county on reels of magnetic tape. We read those files and compressed the heck out of them because our minicomputer disk drive was only 80 Mb including the operating system.
Certificates were printed onto bank note paper using an impact printer. The following is a specimen of the forms we used:
While I don’t know this for sure, I believe this form would be sufficient for a passport. It did not have a raised seal, but the seal is multicolored. It has the child’s name, date filed, date of birth, place of birth, and is was hand signed by a local registrar at the health department. (I know these were good enough for my kinds to get their drivers license.)
The South Carolina birth certificate card has some hidden security features (that I won’t discuss) and is designed to make erasures obvious. It is intaglio printed, which results in a distinctive raised texture of the ink. Notice that the form is only 2 and a half inches tall. I think that certainly qualifies as a “short” form. Barack Obama’s COLB is a full 11 inches tall and not particularly short at all. Indeed the COLB is taller than the so-called “long form” that Hawaii once issued. I can just imagine a birther convention where people pull out their birth certificates to see which one is longer.
I bring this all up to make that point that “short form” and “long form” are not really well-defined terms. Various forms of various sizes with various content are printed by the states for various purposes. Whatever the form, a certified copy of a birth record from a state is evidence of the facts it contains. The size of the document does not detract from evidentiary value what it says on its face.
There are various comments left on other articles about what is and what is not a valid birth certificate for obtaining a passport and other purposes. I would ask the the obvious question: why would a state (Hawaii or other) issue a birth certificate that was NOT valid for a passport? It should be obvious that states will make sure that their birth certificates are useful for the purpose for which they are intended, and it only stands to reason that the standard birth certificate in every will state will be valid for proof of US Citizenship required for a passport. The Department of State describes a valid birth certificate thusly:
States do issue limited content birth documents (what I call the “baseball certificate”) that are intentionally not valid as proof of citizenship, but only proof of age. This is because such documents are often retained by sports coaches and could be used as feeder documents for obtaining false identity papers if they were of the full legal form of a birth certificate.
I don’t know what THIS is good for except bragging rights. (That is an official State of Texas certificate, what they call a “heritage certificate”).
interesting doc. thanks for posting that. i’m curious if something similar was what “scott brown” was referring to in the last lakin thread when she mentioned a LA short-form COLB.
no, scott said it “was the same as Obama’s”, yet LA short form is wallet card so it’s not the same, in other words he lied.
No, this is NOT what Scott Brown was referring to. Scott Brown was referring to the COLB that she went down to her local DOH and requested in order to get a Passport. I was given a COLB that looks identical to the one at Factcheck. And whether you choose to believe me or not – it was NOT accepted; however my long-form was accepted with absolutely no problems. I got my passport ONLY after I requested my long-form which was quite an ordeal, I’ll give you that.
On the request form at my DOH there is no where to request a long-form and they will NOT give you one unless you VERBALLY tell them it is for a Passport, then they readily give it to you as they acknowledge, yes – you need a long-form for a Passport.
I’ve never even seen what you are talking about.
You need to re-read comments. I NEVER said it was an LA short-form COLB. I don’t now or have I ever lived in LA. LA is a major issuer of Passports, and this was just after Katrina and lots of people were in a panic about being able to get it when all the offices were closed down and under water.
Read what is actually written, not what you want it to say.
No, in other words she (Scott Brown) did NOT lie.
What is it with you people? What exactly have I said that gives you the impression that I’m a liar? You just automatically call anyone with whom you disagree or that you can’t wrap your brains around what is being said – a liar? Geeze people.
I did NOT lie. I requested and received my short-form (which looked EXACTLY like the one posted at FactCheck that has Obama’s name on it) – and I was rejected. The letter (I wish I still had it, so I could prove to you) said I MUST submit the long-form. I did get it after a hassle – because no they don’t like to issue long-forms, but my DOH said they knew I needed a long-form for a Passport. I submitted it and got my Passport which was issued OUT OF LA – NO, I don’t live in LA.
It might help you not jump to conclusions that someone is lying if you would just
R E A D the post.
If I came here and posted lie after lie after lie, I could see that someone feels I am lying, but until proven otherwise, please at least give me the benefit of the doubt that I am NOT lying.
So, if it wasn’t LA, what state WAS it? What evidence do you have that the Hawaiian COLB would not get one a passport? My kids got passports with forms (from 2 different states) that have the exact same information and appearance as Obama’s.
And what do you mean “LA is a major issuer of passports”? As far as I know, LA, like all other states issues no passports. And I doubt Louisiana residents hold passports in numbers disproportionate to their presence in the population. Given that it is a relatively poor state and not on the Mexican or Canadian border, I suspect the opposite.
See, I read what you wrote…
Scott
Maybe you were looking at one of the many “altered” Hawaii bc done by the birthers. Did you know that
WNutDaily finally conceded Obama BC was genuine? Yep, look up on Aug 2008!
“The investigation revealed methods used by some of the bloggers.. they added text and images to the certificate scan that weren’t originally there” Google it!
apologies. glancing past ” …as it was being issued out of the Louisiana,…” i made the assumption you were from LA.
so…… what state are you from ? if there is a state that releases a COLB that’s not acceptable proof for a passport we’d like to know about it.
You don’t even make any sense. If your birth certificate came “out” of Lousiana, then you must have been born in LA. States maintain and issue birth certificates for people born in that state. So either you were born in LA, or else you were born somewhere else — in which case you would have gotten the birth certificate from a different state.
In any case, the only possible way that your bc could look “exactly” like Obama’s would be if it came from Hawaii. There is no standard form that applies to all 50 states, and so there would be slight difference from each state.
Do you still have that short form in your possession? If so, why don’t you prove your assertion by posting a copy (with your personal info like name & month/day of birth blanked out of course)?
Passports are issued by the US State Department and generally people get them at a local post office or federal building (if they live in a city where there is a federal court house). You wouldn’t get a passport from Louisiana unless that is where you lived.
Why should anyone believe what you say when you obviously don’t even know where to go to get a passport?
will scott tell us what state is involved, no because we can easily check.
oh what web scott weaves when first scott trys to deceive
Scott, it is really quite simple. Tell us what state you requested your birth certificate or COLB from. We can research it and see if there is such a document that is considered a COLB but not applicable to get a passport. I can tell you for sure that it is not NY because I have a COLB from NY and I was able to get a US Passport with no problem. Others from other states have already stated that they have COLB’s that are similar to Obama’s and have been able to receive a passport. So if you are not lying then tell us the state or post a redacted copy. If not then no one will believe you…
from the state department ( research by ropes end ): requirements for a passport.
APPLICANTS BORN IN THE UNITED STATES: Submit a previous U.S. passport or certified birth certificate. A birth certificate must include your full name,
the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such
records.
I’ve also wondered why Hawaii would have a law that non-Hawaii-born people could get a Hawaii COLB (that would say where the child was actually born, not that it was born in Hawaii). I assume it’s that so many people in Hawaii were born in non-Roman-alphabet countries, and it made it easier to have something in English. Is that why?
don’t know. interesting guess. sounds plausible. i’d be curious if any other states have this option.
Yep same here. My daughter has a short form pretty much identical to Obama’s. Both mine and my husband’s are also similar. They have all been used without issue to get passport, for school registration, etc. We have never had a single question or problem with them.
“Lie” is such an ugly word. If I have this right you’ve said that you were unable to obtain a US passport using a birth certificate essentially similar to Obama’s COLB. Further we note that Obama’s ,COLB meets all the published requirements from the State Dept.
Something is wrong here. Without more information this remains unresolved. Your state of birth and the year the certificate was issued might help. Also was your birth registered within one year?
You apply at the post office, but the actual passport is issued by the regional office nearest where you live and mailed to you from there. There are about 20 such offices, and one is in New Orleans. I would guess that “Scott Brown” lives in the South. He/she does not live in Massachusetts, or the passport would have cone from Boston. So he/she is NOT the Senator, but an impostor.
Maybe the birth certificate wasn’t certified? My mother got a copy of hers from Pennsylvania, and it was just a photocopy with almost no information, just the date of her birth and the county she was born in. And no raised seal. I’m pretty sure she couldn’t get a passport with it.
So female “Scott Brown”, then why won’t you just come clean and say what state your BC is from? What are you hiding? You keep whining that nobody is treating you fairly and you can’t understand why we don’t trust you and yet you deliberately continue to leave out such an important detail on your BC story such as what state you were born in and try to deflect by going off on a whine wondering why we assumed LA, when that is the only state related info you saw fit to include in your “story”.
So, I’m back to suspecting that you made the whole thing up and you’re afraid to say a state, because you know we can check the records and info on what their forms provide and what passports use and prove that you are lying.
If you are actually telling the truth, you should have no problem providing this info in your next post and explaining more about the situation you faced and WHY they told you your document was insufficient. There has to be more to the story than that.
My guess would be foreign adoptions done by Hawaiian Residents.
Oregon allows people who adopt foreign children to get Oregon Birth Certificates.
Here’s the law (ORS 432.230(8)): “The state registrar, upon request, shall prepare and register a certificate in this state for a person born in a foreign country who is not a citizen of the United States and who was adopted through a court of competent jurisdiction in this state. The certificate shall be established upon receipt of a report of a judgment of adoption from the court, proof of the date and place of the person’s birth, and a request from the court, the adopting parents or the adopted person, if 18 years of age or over, that such a certificate be prepared. The certificate shall be labeled “Certificate of Foreign Birth” and shall show the actual country of birth. A statement shall also be included on the certificate indicating that it is not evidence of United States citizenship for the person for whom it is issued. After registration of the birth certificate in the new name of the adopted person, the state registrar shall seal the report of adoption, which shall not be subject to inspection except upon order of a court of competent jurisdiction.
Dunderhead
The point your are trying to make is…?
The very legalese you post refutes your words.
“Oregon allows people who adopt foreign children to get Oregon Birth Certificates.”
The Oregon statute DOESN’T provide a BC or a COLB or whatever the hell you want to call it.
============QUOTE=========================
The certificate shall be labeled “Certificate of Foreign Birth” and shall show the actual country of birth
=============QUOTE========================
So…..
1. Not a BC is it
2. It shows the actual birth place as non USA
==============QUOTE========================
A statement shall also be included on the certificate indicating that it is not evidence of United States citizenship for the person for whom it is issued
==============QUOTE========================
So…..
Not good for anything a BC does….does it.
Next useless piece of mindless, irrelevant birther fluff……
We try to tell Scott this and he/she refuses to believe us. I will try one more time with detail for Scott. I have what is called a Transcript of Birth from the state I was born in New York. It contains less information than President Obama’s. It does,however,include all the information State Department requires for a Passport. Trust me on this Scott. Trust all the other people who are telling you their COLB or Transcript or whatever their birth state calls the document works.
Don’t you get your certificate from the state you were born in?
Scott, mine is like Obama’s with less information. I can get a passport. All these short forms look pretty much the same-my baby grandson’s from Oregon does as well. They all take info from the long form or birth information from the birth(that was how they treated the information at my grandbaby’s birth) and are acceptable if they include the information the State Department needs. The point is not what it “looks like” but the information it contains. Obama’s COLB contains the required information, mine does, and so do the documents of others. I surmise that your short form lacked a piece of information needed. Check on that.
Bovril, you’re an idiot, frankly. Someone was asking for an example of someone getting a state birth certificate from a foreign land.
And the birth certificate does provide proof of certain things, the facts contained within the birth, which under the facts of Hawaii, it does the same. Whether or not it is citizenship is derived from those facts.
Hawaiian Statute says: “Certificates filed within thirty days after the time prescribed therefor shall be prima facie evidence of the facts therein stated.” (HRS 338-12)
So, if the birth certificate says that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii (as Barack Obama’s certificate does say) and it has a filed date within 30 days (Obama’s birth certificate is 4 days after), then it serves as Prima Facie evidence that he was born in Hawaii. If it says he was born in Mombasa Kenya, then it is Prima Facie Evidence that he was born in Mombasa. Get it now? It’s not the birth certificate that proves citizenship. The birth certificate only proves place of birth. The place of birth is what gives the citizenship.
Oregon chooses to more explicitly label the foreign birth certificates than Hawaii does. This is unneccessary, really.
I’m no Birther, by the way. I’ve been on this site longer than you have, and have continually been arguing against the birthers. I was just saying that Oregon allows people born in a foreign land to get an certified Oregon Birth Certificate, much like Hawaii does.
I’d lay you odds that every state has some sort of statute simular to Hawaii (HRS 338-17.8) or Oregon. I live in Oregon, so that is the rules I’m most familiar with.
Oh, and Bovril, it is a birth certificate. It is “a vital record that documents the birth of a child.” It may not establish Citizenship, but it does establish the facts of the birth.
Check out various definitions…
dunstvangeet: I’d lay you odds that every state has some sort of statute simular [sic] to Hawaii (HRS 338-17.8) or Oregon.
While vital statistics legislation is different in every state, there are federal incentives to states to do certain things in common and to enforce certain minimum standards. The National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, publishes “model legislation” and vital statistics departments in the states lobby their state legislatures to adopt provisions from the model legislation.
It was in 1977 when the registration of foreign-born adoptions was added to the model legislation:
Hawaii adopted the foreign-born adoption provision in 1979 (HRS §338-20.5). Note that the foreign-born adoption section is different from HRS §338-17.8 that deals with children born overseas to residents of Hawaii.
Vital Statics in the United States are based on a legal framework built to insure their accuracy and integrity.
Mary Brown: Don’t you get your certificate from the state you were born in?
Typically that is the case, but persons born overseas may have to get their certificate from the US Department of state, and in the case of an out of state adoption, one may also get a certificate from a state other than the one of birth.
Sorry Dunders you’re still an idiot.
It’s not a birth certificate it is a record of foreign birth that has to be backed up by documentation including…….ta-da a real birth certificate.
It provides none of the uses of a BC and as such is in the same league as the vanity “BC” provided by a hospital.
I think it is infinitely more important what it means, than what it is labeled. This is one way that “birthers” lead folks down a rabbit hole with their “certification is not a certificate” (which according to a dictionary is nonsense) junk. It doesn’t matter whether the document is called is a “birth certificate” or a “tossed salad”, if it is issued by the jurisdiction and certifies a birth, then the birth is certified and that and nothing else, is the point of the document.
I understand the point but beg to differ.
Let us use the recent example of XXXX (I forget which one they tend to blur) who swears up and down that his/her BC which was the same as The USURPERS was held to be insufficient for issuance of a passport.
Ergo, Obama’s is also inherently insufficient for the purposes of demonstrating his NBC status.
On closer inspection it appears that his/her’s is a “BC” that does not fulfil the minima requirements for a piece of Federal paper but is still regarded by the state of issuance as a valid BC.
With Dunst, he/she starts with the bald statement
Oregon allows people who adopt foreign children to get Oregon Birth Certificates.
This is patently an incorrect statement and is in exactly the same vein as the same sort of rubbish we see from Birfer World
A Certificate of Foreign Birth is precisely and solely that, and not a BC
Positing a Certificate of Foreign Birth is the same as a BC is at best intellectually mistaken
The document by it’s very nature and requirements for issuance is indirect, derivative and assumptive.
==================QUOTE==================
The certificate shall be established upon receipt of a report of a judgment of adoption from the court, proof of the date and place of the person’s birth, and a request from the court, the adopting parents or the adopted person, if 18 years of age or over, that such a certificate be prepared
==================QUOTE==================
Let us for a moment assume the adoption came through one of the “Stans, Nigeria, Congo etc.
The US government has ongoing issues with the issuance of visa’s from such countries as bribery and forgery of vital documents is both prevalent, well documented and rife.
The CoFB is issued by ASSUMING the root documentation is sound even when such assumption is wishful thinking at best. It then derives unsubstantiated information assumed to be factual to create a document that is not a BC, simply a record of assumptions and unfounded trust.
It’s not a birth certificate it is a record of foreign birth…
Let’s take a look at the definition of birth certificate, as defined in the dictionary. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “Birth Certificate” as being: “An official record of the date and place of a person’s birth, usually including the names of the parents.” Dictionary.com defines it the exact same way, saying: “an official form recording the birth of a baby and containing pertinent data, as name, sex, date, place, and parents.”
Now, the “Certificate of Foreign Birth” is an official record of the date and place of a person’s birth. It meets the requirement under that definition of a birth certificate. Unless you can provide me a legal definition from Oregon of a birth certificate that excludes the “Certificate of Foreign Birth” I think that you’re constricting the definition of “Birth Certificate” too far. It’s the same thing when the Birthers state: “It’s not a birth certificate. It’s a certification of live birth.” It’s a redicilous statement.
The one thing Scott Brown has pretty clearly indicated about the short form birth certificate that she is alleging was useless for obtaining a passport in 2005 is that it is NOT a LA certificate.
Perhaps by Murphy’s Law or some other quirk of fate the reality is that if short form birth certificate concerned WAS from LA state it would have gone some way to corrocborating at least part of her allegation he that she could not obtain a passport with it. The reason being that LA short forms contain only the initials of the christian names of parents and thus do not meet the passport application’s requirement for it to contain the full names.
It would not of course have corroborated the part of her story about the birth certificate looking EXACTLY like Obama’s COLB.
It’s possible that she submitted a short form certificate from another state which looked very similar to Obama’s in format but was lacking in one or more of the passport application’s requirements of it, quite possibly the full names of parents ie not just with initials of christian names.
Her description “looked exactly like” may have been no more than an impetuous exaggeration in the heat of the moment.
She can indeed help clear it up very quickly by indicating which state the short form BC concerned was issued by and in which year it was issued (formats change over the years).It can then be established if such a BC would have “looked exactly like” or even “similar to” Obama’s 2007 COLB and more importantly whether it would have contained everything that a passport application in 2005 required it to contain.
What gives people the impression you’re a liar you ask? Well when you continually say youre not a birther and then parrot discredited birther talking points its just hard to believe you.
Occam’s razor.
You’re a liar because your story has more holes in it than swiss cheese.
Scott, was your birth certificate issued by a Southwestern border state? Did you apply for a passport between 2003 and 2009?
In those states, there was a documented history of birth certificate fraud by midwives. The State Department has a list of midwives who committed this fraud, and because they were subjecting those passport applications to undue scrutiny, they entered into a SettlementAgreement with, among others, the ACLU.
Among other things, the State Department was to train its employees and offer community outreach to explain that “that birth in the
United States by the applicant and eligibility to apply for a U.S. passport based on that birth is not in any way affected by the immigration status of either birth parent or other family members…”
Because of this documented birth certificate fraud in Texas (and California), short forms from those states may not be accepted.
Greg…..not sure if I fully follow.
Seems to me the fraud by SBA’s was done prior to or during preparation of the data for the long form because they wouldn’t have any role in preparing, signing or issuing of the short form.
Would there be an indication on a Texas issued short form between 2003 and 2009 that the birth occurred “non-institution” and attended only by a midwife or other birth attendant? Would that information not only be on the long form? (assuming the registration had been timely)
Therefore are you effectively saying that more or less every passport applicant between 2003 and 2009 would be asked for their long form and that the reason they would be asked for it is so that so that it could then be checked whether the birth attendant noted on their long form was on the suspected list?
Scott Brown has already indicated her passport was issued in 2005 (Hurricane Katrina time).
If you google “Texas California Short form,” you’ll find several sites that say that short forms are not accepted from these two states. Texas claims on their website that the short form is acceptable for those born in a hospital (although I don’t know how that is conveyed on the form).
My guess is that every applicant submitting a Texas or California birth certificate is required to submit a long form certificate, even if the form meets the other requirements of 22 C.F.R. § 51.42(a).
If the long form lists the person as having been delivered by one of the listed midwifes, they will be required to submit additional information.
Yes Greg,there seems to be a number of sources out there, most of which are private companies specialising in passport application services, which all indicate that both Texas and California Passport Agency Offices do require all new passport applicants to submit only a “long form” birth certificate and that they do not accept the “short form”.
This indeed indicates that those Agency Offices are employing additional conditions regarding birth certificates to those set out in 22 CFR 51.42A.
There’s no indication that Passport Agency Offices located in any other State require the “long form”. That includes Louisiana located Offices.
Interestingly, none of the application procedures and advice set out in these sites seems to address the related issue of someone for example born in Hawaii presenting a passport application to a Texas located Passport Agency office or someone born in Texas presenting a passport application to a Hawaii located Passport Agency office.
On a literal interpretation, the wording of some of their advice etc appears to indicate that it’s the location of the Passport Agency Office which is receiving the application rather than the State in which the birth took place which determines whether a short or long form will be required.
However I think that can be put down to clumsiness and it seems much more likely to me that in reality it is in fact the State which issued the birth certificate which would determine how every Passport Agency Office would treat the issue of whether a short or long form is required, rather than simply the location of the Passport Agency Office in which the application is made.
California and Texas issued short forms do seem likely to be unacceptable to any Passport Agency Office in any State. For how long that situation has been in place and indeed whether it is still in place we don’t actually know.
The details of Scott Brown’s application are not known and her story is incomplete and accordingly a little incongruent.
If she is interested in being believed on here she should at least supply the following fairly innocuous and not at all over-sensitive or personal information….
1. The State from which the ultimately “rejected” short form birth certificate was issued
2. The State in which she submitted her passport application.
3. The State from which The Passport Office issued the letter rejecting the “short form”.
4. The State in which the Passport Office to which she in due course then supplied the “long form” is located.
5. The State in which the Passport Office which eventually issued her passport was located.
Only then can a clearer picture arise. Just the name of the States in each case would suffice.
Sorry forgot to mention, the only other thing which struck me as a little odd about Scott Brown’s birth certificate story is this…..
She was 43/44 years of age in 2005 when she applied for the passport and claims that up to that point her and her husband had travelled extensively and that it was only the impending new requirement to have a passport to be able to leave the country which prompted them to apply for passports.
If they required to submit birth certificates at all it means that it was almost certainly their first passports.
Anyone who has never possessed a passport cannot have travelled internationally other than to the very limited number of bordering countries to which US citizens could go without a passport.
To describe that as “travelling extensively” seems at the very least somewhat of an exaggeration.
To have attained the age of 43/44 and never owned a passport is not normally indicative of someone who is any kind of seasoned international traveller.
Good points! The “extensive travel” statements she has made do does appear to be yet another inconsistency in “Scott Brown’s” tale.
“Scott Brown” has been back to post since we started asking for further details and so far…deafening silence on our questions…
…just more reason to suspect we’re being fed nothing but BS “concern trolling” fish stories.
That struck me as odd, too. There weren’t any new requirements implemented in 2005 in any case — the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was implemented in January 2007.
I believe that “scott brown”, caught in her web of deceit, is hoping that we forget about the numerous inconsistencies in her story. She will either ignore the requests and pretend it never happened or she will attempt to twist it so that it looks like the posters on this blog are “attacking” her in some way to attempt to confuse the original issue. Either way she will never address the questions that we have brought up regarding her so called passport/short form work of fiction….
My guess is that “Scott Brown” will dodge the issue by trying to return here under a different sock-puppet, as sock-puppeteering seems to be a common birther practice for those that come here.
MAybe…although she posted in the other thread under her “moniker”, but of course did not address her earlier “story”….I think she is going to pull a Sven, pretend the question was never asked and ignore the requests….Because if she does acknowledge them then she will be exposed for telling a mistruth, and if you recall once the birthers come to this site and are exposed, the usually get upset and leave….
I’m coming in late to this discussion. I’m from California and pulled out my birth certificate that I had to get when I applied for a passport back in 2006. It’s the short form and says COLB on top. It says where I was born, who my parents were and who the doctor was. This was just fine for getting my passport. And it was filed 2 months after my birth.
I just noticed that it has the name of the hospital on it. Does this mean that it’s actually the long form? Anyway, there are no footprints on it!
I’ve posted mines in another thread; and guess what? It looks like Obama’s (because I AM from Hawaii)
I posted two forms of the COLB that Hawaii offered. One from 1976, a card sized version that one could have in their wallet (and a current VALID form of the CoLB) and a full size version. Raised seal and all
Full Size COLB:
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/7040/hawaiicolb.jpg
Card Size Birth Registration Card:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/395/hawaiicolbbirthregistra.jpg
So “Scott” Brown, where is your Colb?BC? hmm?
as they say, put up or shut-up
Texas still issues the so-called “long form” BC as well as the “short form” BC, as well as an “heirloom” BC; given that detail, I would imagine that the shorter may be useful in-State but not out of it (because it fails to meet Federal quality standards).
I must stress that I’m only guessing/speculating on this, though.