surprising service

[cellio]

The passport folks bounced my application because they didn't like my vintage 1960s birth certificate (stamped and signed but not embossed). So I sent off for a fresh copy.

A few weeks after I mailed the application I got a postcard telling me that I should expect it to take six weeks. Five days later I received the birth certificate, which is now on its way to the passport folks for round two.

Granted, I did write the certificate number at the bottom of the application (I had the information, after all, so it couldn't hurt), but still, this is much better response than I would have expected out of any bureaucracy, let alone a large county in a large state. I'm impressed.

Comments

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

vintage 1960s birth certificate
Vintage. That makes me feel so much better than old.
(I swear, my birth certificate looks like somebody just typed it up on scrap paper in a decrepit old ribbon type writer; nothing on it even hints at "official document" status. I'd hate to think what the passport folks would think of it now, now that my original passport has expired.)

[cellio]

Mine also has that typewriter-in-need-of-recalibration look, but it's at least typed on official paper. And it has a purple ink seal next to some text that says (approximately) "this is official if stamped in purple", but I guess they didn't predict color photocopiers. The new one is on (fancier) formal paper and embossed -- but it's the same old typewritten original, just copied onto different paper. I guess I'd just assumed that by now all of the data was in a database and they'd print it fresh as needed.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

I have no Idea where my birth cirtificate is, (Eather one of them, I have 2). At some point I should write to the US state department and whomever in England one writes to to get copies. But it doesn't seem real pressing. I have passports for ID.

I tend to have redudent IDs, 3 passports, 2 birth cirtificates etc.

[cellio]

Two birth certificates? What, one of the countries involved wouldn't accept the document from the other as proof of identity? (Were you born in one of those countries to citizens of the other, or something like that?)

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

I was born in the UK, by my folks are US citizens. So when I was born they hospital gave me a birth certificate, and then they went to the US embasasey
who gave me a second one.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

One time, in grammar school, we had to bring in birth certificates for some reason. Most of the kids brought in a sheet that could fit in a 9x12 envelope. One kid was born in Poland and naturalized with his parents. He brought in a 2'x 3' framed document with engraved designs all over it. :D
-- Dagonell