Yesterday, I traveled as planned to our nearest Social Security office to apply for Social Security cards for our four newest children and to request a name change for our first adopted child, Maizie, whom we brought home from China in December of 2002.

When the woman behind the desk asked for proof of Maizie’s citizenship, I had her Maizie’s Certificate of Citizenship, which she unceremoniously refused. It turned out that the USCIS office who issued the Certificate had not filled in the certification portion at the bottom (it was signed and sealed, but with no dates or other information filled in), but I had never noticed. How I will get this fixed remains to be seen, but that’s another topic for another day.

After I got over my shock about the Certificate being incomplete – especially considering how hard it was to apply for the darn thing and how expensive it was – I remembered that the Certificate wasn’t really necessary. Maizie came into the country on an IR-3 visa, and under the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, this meant she was an automatic citizen. Unfortunately, this particular SS officer appeared never to have heard of the Act, and insisted she needed tangible proof to make the changes to our daughter’s card. I kept insisting Maizie is a citizen, she kept insisting she was not – without proof.

Finally, she began to scroll through the list of acceptable documents, naming each one and snidely remarking that it would provide proof, but did I have one? No. Finally, she got to “IR-3” and I jumped in: “THAT I have.” (Which, as you’ll recall, I’d already told her).

She asked to see it, so I handed over Maizie’s Chinese passport with the page with the stamp showing. She inspected it momentarily and then indicated that this document, too, was unacceptable because it was “expired.” I know, and YOU probably know that Maizie’s citizenship did not “expire,” but that because adopted children are admitted to the country with alien visas, a default expiration date is given. The SS officer, seeking to belittle me further, smirked that she could enter the expired visa numbers into the computer to establish that I was devoid of citizenship proof for Maizie. Fortunately, the joke was on her. She muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me! It’s going to accept an expired document?”

Victory.

continued