Me (20) and my little sister (14) were born from homeless parents who have since died from overdoses. The government never knew we were born and their homeless friends who raised us never knew their government names. So what we need help with is documentation, we technically don't exist and renting an apartment is very difficult. I have a job and she's studying on khan academy but we want normal lives. How can we get documents when we aren't even sure of our date of birth? Location: Ohio/anywhere
some relevant comments:
We've been drifters and haven't known anyone for long enough for them to be able to prove our legitimacy. I also don't want my sister going into some random housing since we aren't sure we are entirely related. What are your thoughts?
Born in some motel tub probably, parents hated hospitals.
Cat fact: cats sometimes have their kittens in what we think are strange places as well.
Always feel sad seeing the OP being downvoted for asking questions. Like yeah maybe someone more experienced with legal matters may think it silly to ask if you can claim refugee status, but if you don’t “exist” in this system, I think it’s perfectly understandable to wonder if you’d have a better shot in another. It’s also better to ask that here and be told it’s not possible than to show up at the Mexican border claiming asylum and be told it’s not possible.
It sounds a lot like OP is trying to subtly correct their story in the comments to see if the truth would be more helpful than the lie of homeless parents who hated hospitals. I'm thinking OP knows exactly who their parents are and are fishing for ways to explain their undocumented presence in the country that they hope the government will accept.
Or maybe they’re on the lam and trying to establish a new identity. Or maybe they’re like the GPO girl (look it up). Or testing out their creative writing. Regardless, I don’t quite believe this story … how can you drift for so many years and not have one encounter with the system?
Well if they can't "pass" and try to come forward, they're probably changing continents, so I hope someone tells them. I see they keep talking about Mexico for some reason, so I'd bet their appearance is consistent with that. I wonder if they can at least nail down their parents' death records. That could create a trail to support birthright citizenship.
It seems wildly optimistic, for any administration. The OP doesn't know where or when they were born, and the only people who could apparently testify to that (their parents) are dead. I can't imagine that the US government can be required to just take their word for it that they were born here, absent any kind of documentation.
They can't legally be deported without knowing where to send them, as that might render them stateless. But they aren't going to just rubber-stamp them as US citizens without some paper trail.
OP says they likely weren't born in a hospital, and that he never went to school. Unless there's some record of him from his parents interacting with some other government agency around the time of his birth, I dunno what kind of claim he's going to be able to make on that "delayed registration of birth" form.
At least the California version of that form requires particular documents, or sworn statements by people having knowledge of the circumstances of the birth (both, often).
People on the legal advice comments are generally advising away from trying to go to Mexico, and I'd agree to not just GO there, but it might be much easier to establish citizenship there (if that IS where his parents were from). Because if his parents were Mexican citizens, he should be too (subject to whatever crazy hoops you have to go through to prove that to their satisfaction).
I don't think his parents were Mexican, I think he's comparing his situation to being an undocumented immigrant and (understandably) clutching at straws for anything that might be easier to deal with than the US government. I think he's going to find it an uphill struggle wherever he is.
I liked the comment that "undocumented" immigrants have more documents (from their home country) and more friends than these two. They are even more disadvantaged than immigrants and that's saying something.
It wasn't clear to me why he mentioned Mexico, but I figured there had to be SOME reason, rather than, say - Canada, which would be a lot closer to Ohio.
I think there's a lot of people out there still, especially people who don't live in a southern border state or have never actually been to Mexico, who still have this idea that it's some totally lawless frontier state where anything goes.
It's not as developed as the US or Canada by any means, but they most definitely have a functional government and immigration system.
You're absolutely right, but here's my favorite opportunity to get up on my soapbox and say THIS IS WHY YOU DO NOT TALK TO ICE, NOT EVEN A WORD, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT.
The government has to prove you are removable, which in 99% of all cases looks like this:
You are not a citizen of the US
You are a citizen of [Mexico, etc]
You crossed the border without going through customs.
They then have to provide the proof of this. And I SHIT YOU NOT, HAND TO GOD, almost always the proof is this:
"I asked him where he was from and he said Mexico. His fingerprints aren't in our system."
AND THAT'S IT. THAT'S ENOUGH TO GET YOU DEPORTED.
You can literally hand the government everything they need to deport you with one fucking word. I've found that when people hear "don't talk to ICE" they think "don't tell them how you got here," but that's not good enough. DON'T SAY ONE WORD.
Now, is this how it's working in practice in Trump 2? Does this still hold with the beloved Kavanaugh stop "guilty until proven innocent" shit? Do we think Brett Kavanaugh even knew the burden of proof in immigration proceedings before blessing this shit? ABSOLUTELY NOT, but do not give these assholes even a little bit of permission to fuck you over.
Careful, that issue is more complex than it looks. The 14th amendment says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But this turned out to be vague; different people in practice interpreted it differently. It clearly granted citizenship to the children of former slaves, as it was intended to do, but what about others? After court cases and appeals and so on it ended up in the Supreme Court in 1897 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
Quoting from the opinion of the court:
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States.
Pretty straight forward, I would say. If you are domiciled in the United States and you aren’t an Indian or a foreign dignitary such as a minister or an ambassador or occupying American territory as an act of war, then any of your children born while you are domiciled here are United States citizens.
But note the term domiciled. You have to be legally living in the country. Not merely visiting for a week or two, not simply in an American airport for an hour between connecting flights, and not having crossed the border illegally.
Wong Kim Ark’s parents had immigrated to the US legally and owned a business in San Francisco for 20 years. When they returned to China he stayed in San Francisco. After a while he took a trip to China and was readmitted as a US citizen on his return. Four years after that he did the same thing and was instead detained by Customs who claimed that he couldn’t possibly be a citizen. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor because his parents were legally domiciled in the United States when he was born and thus the 14th amendment applied even though they were Chinese and not “Colored”.
Trump’s Executive order on the matter only instructs the government to apply this exact interpretation. He didn’t make up a new rule, he is simply correcting decades of misapplication of the Supreme Court’s actual ruling. If today’s Supreme Court supports birthright citizenship for illegal aliens then that indeed will change the meaning of the amendment by judicial fiat.
Incidentally, if you read the Dissenting Opinion you’ll find that it doesn’t support birthright citizenship at all. It argues that citizenship can only ever be conferred by parentage. It argues that the common law “standard” that the majority applied in their ruling was itself in flux at the time. It was apparently changing from strict birthright citizenship towards citizenship based entirely on parentage, and the writers of the 14th amendment may have meant the “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to be interpreted that way.
It obviously doesn’t. The Supreme Court’s ruling is that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause is there to concisely state the several exceptions that were enumerated in common law in most of Europe at the time without having to digress into a whole paragraph about it as the court did throughout their ruling, including the section I quoted.
One of those exceptions is the requirement that the person be resident in a country before their children gain birthright citizenship. A visitor to England might be “subject to the jurisdiction” of England in the sense that they shouldn’t murder anyone while there, but they owe no allegiance to England and are thus only partially subject to English jurisdiction. Or to take a more bombastic example, imagine a Russian whose assets were frozen by the United States after the invasion of Ukraine. They are in some sense “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, but their (future) children couldn’t suddenly get birthright citizenship because of it. No, they have to actually immigrate here before their children could gain birthright citizenship.
The court cites case after case, indeed going back to the 1300s, to show that English common law gave birthright citizenship to children born within the dominion and protection of the King of England, but also that this required their parents to owe ligeance, or loyalty to, the King. Specific examples of people who might be inside England but who owe no ligeance to the King are travelers in a ship docked at an English port, ambassadors of foreign powers, and soldiers of enemy armies occupying English territory during a war.
They also link it to the brand new situation, not anticipated by common law, of the Indians and their tribes who live within the borders of the United States. Indians and their children owe “ligeance” to their tribe, not to the United States, so they pay no taxes, are not counted when apportioning seats in Congress, do not gain birthright citizenship, and so on.
So, no, there's no reference to domiciled in the 14th amendment, and thus the SC's use fo the term is made up, and has no relevance to how the amendment is enforced. Got it.
Your, and Trump's interpretation seems to ignore the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", which is actually in the amendment, and not your made up domiciled bullshit, and would seem to suggest that people are allowed to come here illegally, because they can't break the laws of the US, as they aren't subject to them.
Follow up question for you: Would people who have lived here for year as "illegal aliens" be us citizens, under your "domiciled" interpretation? Why or why not?
So, no, there's no reference to domiciled in the 14th amendment, and thus the SC's use fo the term is made up, and has no relevance to how the amendment is enforced.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If the Supreme Court could only use the exact words that already existed in the Constitution then they wouldn’t exactly be able to clarify the meaning, would they? All they’d be able to do would be to repeat the text of the Constitution which people have already demonstrated that they don’t understand.
Go read their actual opinion and then tell me how it’s wrong. If they make any mistakes in their reasoning then maybe you and I could come to an agreement, but if you’re just going to throw away hundreds of years of common law precedent merely because of one word then nothing you say is going to convince me and answering any question you ask won’t convince you of either.
So, no, you can't answer my question. Got it. I figured it was just a racist screed designed to deny people who clearly are citizens their citizenship, but the fact that you can't even answer the question shows how little thought you've put into it. Thanks.
Nah. "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is much more clearly understood as not having diplomatic immunity or a couple other exceptions. Of course if I visit a country as a typical civilian while pregnant I am subject to its jurisdiction!
Nope, that’s not what the people who wrote it and ratified it said at the time. The theories you are espousing were made up from whole cloth in very recent years, by people who are racists and xenophobes.
Of course it does. “Domiciled” does not refer to where your house is, but which country you owe allegiance to. Illegal immigrants pay no taxes, can’t serve on juries, can’t vote, can’t be conscripted, can't be elected, etc, etc. They have none of the responsibilities or benefits of citizenship and therefore, in the terms used by common law, they have no allegiance to the United States.
Edit:
Note that “domiciled” has another similar meaning within the United States and this sense does simply mean where your (primary) residence is. You and your assets are considered to be “domiciled” in one particular State within the Union even while you are traveling within another. While you are in that other State you can't vote in their elections, serve on their juries, get conscripted into their State militia, pay their (income) taxes, etc, etc. You can of course move between states without asking for permission, so in that respect it is quite different from immigrating to another country.
A lot of citizens pay zero income taxes. We all, regardless of citizenship status, pay sales taxes and property taxes (or rent to a landlord who pays property taxes).
Incorrect. They use an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), a number given out by the IRS specifically for people, including nonresident aliens (Illegal immigrants, as you know them), who don't qualify for a SSN but have a need or desire to pay taxes.
Why do they do this? Because many pathways to citizenship require not breaking any laws. That includes dodging taxes or using stolen SSNs.
Not really - there is a subset of people who don’t want the government to know about their children/don’t believe in modern medicine. Every few years there’s a story about a kid who doesn’t have a birth certificate and cannot prove their identity, because their parents homebirthed/homeschooled them.
What is surprising is that they never encountered anybody in a position of authority, not even after their parents’ death.
The author grew up in similar circumstances but I think at least they were documented. It's been years since I read it but it's definitely a testament how someone raised off the grid can still be educated.
In one part of the book she talks about rising above all of that and having a normal home and life and job, while her parents were still dumpster diving a few blocks from her job.
Exactly. This reads to me like siblings who ran from abuse, young girl runs away with (way too) old bf, or the girl could be being trafficked/kidnapped. Of course may be real but I’ve worked extensively with the homeless population in detox and psych settings and this does not give me that vibe.
If you’ve never read Educated by Tara Westover, this gave me similar vibes. She grew up in a survivalist anti-government family and iirc her mother was kind of a self-taught midwife who would deliver the babies for other survivalists in rural Idaho. Tara eventually had enough sense to teach herself enough to be able to go to college, and escape but the entire thing is unbelievable and has a lot of parallels to a story like this. I think for many of us it’s unimaginable for someone to exist off the grid like this, but it happens way more often than we’d like to admit.
Well, it’s very possible for kids to get great education at home and formal schooling doesn’t automatically make someone good at reading or writing. But it just seems unlikely that OP would’ve developed the skills he’s displayed given the upbringing he described. He doesn’t give the impression that his parents would’ve done a great job homeschooling him, and it would be difficult to teach yourself without a good foundation. Not impossible though.
I had a roommate in college who didn't have a birth certificate because her parents were hippie weirdos. Trying to get one in her twenties was a pain in the ass.
I get the feeling they are actual illegal immigrants fishing for ways they can try to explain their undocumented status. Too many different stories in the comments they are trying to test out.
Drifting Bot
Undocumented siblings
some relevant comments:
Cat fact: cats sometimes have their kittens in what we think are strange places as well.
Always feel sad seeing the OP being downvoted for asking questions. Like yeah maybe someone more experienced with legal matters may think it silly to ask if you can claim refugee status, but if you don’t “exist” in this system, I think it’s perfectly understandable to wonder if you’d have a better shot in another. It’s also better to ask that here and be told it’s not possible than to show up at the Mexican border claiming asylum and be told it’s not possible.
It sounds a lot like OP is trying to subtly correct their story in the comments to see if the truth would be more helpful than the lie of homeless parents who hated hospitals. I'm thinking OP knows exactly who their parents are and are fishing for ways to explain their undocumented presence in the country that they hope the government will accept.
Ding ding ding.
Or maybe they’re on the lam and trying to establish a new identity. Or maybe they’re like the GPO girl (look it up). Or testing out their creative writing. Regardless, I don’t quite believe this story … how can you drift for so many years and not have one encounter with the system?
Well if they can't "pass" and try to come forward, they're probably changing continents, so I hope someone tells them. I see they keep talking about Mexico for some reason, so I'd bet their appearance is consistent with that. I wonder if they can at least nail down their parents' death records. That could create a trail to support birthright citizenship.
That commenter sounds wildly optimistic re the current admin
It seems wildly optimistic, for any administration. The OP doesn't know where or when they were born, and the only people who could apparently testify to that (their parents) are dead. I can't imagine that the US government can be required to just take their word for it that they were born here, absent any kind of documentation.
They can't legally be deported without knowing where to send them, as that might render them stateless. But they aren't going to just rubber-stamp them as US citizens without some paper trail.
OP says they likely weren't born in a hospital, and that he never went to school. Unless there's some record of him from his parents interacting with some other government agency around the time of his birth, I dunno what kind of claim he's going to be able to make on that "delayed registration of birth" form.
At least the California version of that form requires particular documents, or sworn statements by people having knowledge of the circumstances of the birth (both, often).
People on the legal advice comments are generally advising away from trying to go to Mexico, and I'd agree to not just GO there, but it might be much easier to establish citizenship there (if that IS where his parents were from). Because if his parents were Mexican citizens, he should be too (subject to whatever crazy hoops you have to go through to prove that to their satisfaction).
I don't think his parents were Mexican, I think he's comparing his situation to being an undocumented immigrant and (understandably) clutching at straws for anything that might be easier to deal with than the US government. I think he's going to find it an uphill struggle wherever he is.
I liked the comment that "undocumented" immigrants have more documents (from their home country) and more friends than these two. They are even more disadvantaged than immigrants and that's saying something.
It wasn't clear to me why he mentioned Mexico, but I figured there had to be SOME reason, rather than, say - Canada, which would be a lot closer to Ohio.
I think there's a lot of people out there still, especially people who don't live in a southern border state or have never actually been to Mexico, who still have this idea that it's some totally lawless frontier state where anything goes.
It's not as developed as the US or Canada by any means, but they most definitely have a functional government and immigration system.
You're absolutely right, but here's my favorite opportunity to get up on my soapbox and say THIS IS WHY YOU DO NOT TALK TO ICE, NOT EVEN A WORD, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT.
The government has to prove you are removable, which in 99% of all cases looks like this:
They then have to provide the proof of this. And I SHIT YOU NOT, HAND TO GOD, almost always the proof is this:
"I asked him where he was from and he said Mexico. His fingerprints aren't in our system."
AND THAT'S IT. THAT'S ENOUGH TO GET YOU DEPORTED.
You can literally hand the government everything they need to deport you with one fucking word. I've found that when people hear "don't talk to ICE" they think "don't tell them how you got here," but that's not good enough. DON'T SAY ONE WORD.
Now, is this how it's working in practice in Trump 2? Does this still hold with the beloved Kavanaugh stop "guilty until proven innocent" shit? Do we think Brett Kavanaugh even knew the burden of proof in immigration proceedings before blessing this shit? ABSOLUTELY NOT, but do not give these assholes even a little bit of permission to fuck you over.
You shouldn't talk to law enforcement in general, and that goes double for feds and triple for ICE
Every day is Shut the Fuck up Friday.
Especially with SCOTUS looking at amending the 14th Amendment by judicial fiat
Careful, that issue is more complex than it looks. The 14th amendment says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But this turned out to be vague; different people in practice interpreted it differently. It clearly granted citizenship to the children of former slaves, as it was intended to do, but what about others? After court cases and appeals and so on it ended up in the Supreme Court in 1897 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
Quoting from the opinion of the court:
Pretty straight forward, I would say. If you are domiciled in the United States and you aren’t an Indian or a foreign dignitary such as a minister or an ambassador or occupying American territory as an act of war, then any of your children born while you are domiciled here are United States citizens.
But note the term domiciled. You have to be legally living in the country. Not merely visiting for a week or two, not simply in an American airport for an hour between connecting flights, and not having crossed the border illegally.
Wong Kim Ark’s parents had immigrated to the US legally and owned a business in San Francisco for 20 years. When they returned to China he stayed in San Francisco. After a while he took a trip to China and was readmitted as a US citizen on his return. Four years after that he did the same thing and was instead detained by Customs who claimed that he couldn’t possibly be a citizen. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor because his parents were legally domiciled in the United States when he was born and thus the 14th amendment applied even though they were Chinese and not “Colored”.
Trump’s Executive order on the matter only instructs the government to apply this exact interpretation. He didn’t make up a new rule, he is simply correcting decades of misapplication of the Supreme Court’s actual ruling. If today’s Supreme Court supports birthright citizenship for illegal aliens then that indeed will change the meaning of the amendment by judicial fiat.
Incidentally, if you read the Dissenting Opinion you’ll find that it doesn’t support birthright citizenship at all. It argues that citizenship can only ever be conferred by parentage. It argues that the common law “standard” that the majority applied in their ruling was itself in flux at the time. It was apparently changing from strict birthright citizenship towards citizenship based entirely on parentage, and the writers of the 14th amendment may have meant the “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to be interpreted that way.
Please quote in the 14th amendment where the word "domiciled" is used.
It obviously doesn’t. The Supreme Court’s ruling is that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause is there to concisely state the several exceptions that were enumerated in common law in most of Europe at the time without having to digress into a whole paragraph about it as the court did throughout their ruling, including the section I quoted.
One of those exceptions is the requirement that the person be resident in a country before their children gain birthright citizenship. A visitor to England might be “subject to the jurisdiction” of England in the sense that they shouldn’t murder anyone while there, but they owe no allegiance to England and are thus only partially subject to English jurisdiction. Or to take a more bombastic example, imagine a Russian whose assets were frozen by the United States after the invasion of Ukraine. They are in some sense “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, but their (future) children couldn’t suddenly get birthright citizenship because of it. No, they have to actually immigrate here before their children could gain birthright citizenship.
The court cites case after case, indeed going back to the 1300s, to show that English common law gave birthright citizenship to children born within the dominion and protection of the King of England, but also that this required their parents to owe ligeance, or loyalty to, the King. Specific examples of people who might be inside England but who owe no ligeance to the King are travelers in a ship docked at an English port, ambassadors of foreign powers, and soldiers of enemy armies occupying English territory during a war.
They also link it to the brand new situation, not anticipated by common law, of the Indians and their tribes who live within the borders of the United States. Indians and their children owe “ligeance” to their tribe, not to the United States, so they pay no taxes, are not counted when apportioning seats in Congress, do not gain birthright citizenship, and so on.
Thus the concept of legal residence, or domicile.
So, no, there's no reference to domiciled in the 14th amendment, and thus the SC's use fo the term is made up, and has no relevance to how the amendment is enforced. Got it.
Your, and Trump's interpretation seems to ignore the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", which is actually in the amendment, and not your made up domiciled bullshit, and would seem to suggest that people are allowed to come here illegally, because they can't break the laws of the US, as they aren't subject to them.
Follow up question for you: Would people who have lived here for year as "illegal aliens" be us citizens, under your "domiciled" interpretation? Why or why not?
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If the Supreme Court could only use the exact words that already existed in the Constitution then they wouldn’t exactly be able to clarify the meaning, would they? All they’d be able to do would be to repeat the text of the Constitution which people have already demonstrated that they don’t understand.
Go read their actual opinion and then tell me how it’s wrong. If they make any mistakes in their reasoning then maybe you and I could come to an agreement, but if you’re just going to throw away hundreds of years of common law precedent merely because of one word then nothing you say is going to convince me and answering any question you ask won’t convince you of either.
So, no, you can't answer my question. Got it. I figured it was just a racist screed designed to deny people who clearly are citizens their citizenship, but the fact that you can't even answer the question shows how little thought you've put into it. Thanks.
Nah. "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is much more clearly understood as not having diplomatic immunity or a couple other exceptions. Of course if I visit a country as a typical civilian while pregnant I am subject to its jurisdiction!
Nope, that’s not what the people who wrote it and ratified it said at the time. The theories you are espousing were made up from whole cloth in very recent years, by people who are racists and xenophobes.
That doesn’t prevent one from being domiciled here though.
Of course it does. “Domiciled” does not refer to where your house is, but which country you owe allegiance to. Illegal immigrants pay no taxes, can’t serve on juries, can’t vote, can’t be conscripted, can't be elected, etc, etc. They have none of the responsibilities or benefits of citizenship and therefore, in the terms used by common law, they have no allegiance to the United States.
Edit:
Note that “domiciled” has another similar meaning within the United States and this sense does simply mean where your (primary) residence is. You and your assets are considered to be “domiciled” in one particular State within the Union even while you are traveling within another. While you are in that other State you can't vote in their elections, serve on their juries, get conscripted into their State militia, pay their (income) taxes, etc, etc. You can of course move between states without asking for permission, so in that respect it is quite different from immigrating to another country.
Absolutely false.
Also not entirely accurate.
Income taxes? Only using a fraudulently–obtained SSN perhaps.
A lot of citizens pay zero income taxes. We all, regardless of citizenship status, pay sales taxes and property taxes (or rent to a landlord who pays property taxes).
You’re missing the point. It’s not the dollar value that you pay in that matters.
Incorrect. They use an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), a number given out by the IRS specifically for people, including nonresident aliens (Illegal immigrants, as you know them), who don't qualify for a SSN but have a need or desire to pay taxes.
Why do they do this? Because many pathways to citizenship require not breaking any laws. That includes dodging taxes or using stolen SSNs.
Google ITIN, and get back to us.
Undocumented people pay lots of taxes via sales tax, and can't call on lots of services taxes pay for.
Read the legislative history. It is crystal clear. You’re simply incorrect about this.
Government's proof that they aren't from the USA: https://pngtree.com/freepng/proof-verify-unfinished-stamped-vector_12995889.html
Am I the only one that got runaway or kidnapping vibes?
Not really - there is a subset of people who don’t want the government to know about their children/don’t believe in modern medicine. Every few years there’s a story about a kid who doesn’t have a birth certificate and cannot prove their identity, because their parents homebirthed/homeschooled them.
What is surprising is that they never encountered anybody in a position of authority, not even after their parents’ death.
Idk about that but it really struck me how well OP can read and write with a background of being homeless drifters.
Check out The Glass Castle
The author grew up in similar circumstances but I think at least they were documented. It's been years since I read it but it's definitely a testament how someone raised off the grid can still be educated.
In one part of the book she talks about rising above all of that and having a normal home and life and job, while her parents were still dumpster diving a few blocks from her job.
Without ever attending school? Indeed. One might even say suspiciously literate.
Exactly. This reads to me like siblings who ran from abuse, young girl runs away with (way too) old bf, or the girl could be being trafficked/kidnapped. Of course may be real but I’ve worked extensively with the homeless population in detox and psych settings and this does not give me that vibe.
If you’ve never read Educated by Tara Westover, this gave me similar vibes. She grew up in a survivalist anti-government family and iirc her mother was kind of a self-taught midwife who would deliver the babies for other survivalists in rural Idaho. Tara eventually had enough sense to teach herself enough to be able to go to college, and escape but the entire thing is unbelievable and has a lot of parallels to a story like this. I think for many of us it’s unimaginable for someone to exist off the grid like this, but it happens way more often than we’d like to admit.
My sisters and I all learned to read around 4, a couple of years before we went to school.
I’m not sure I understand your point.
I guess I was thinking about them reading when they had never been to school vs us reading before we went to school.
Well, it’s very possible for kids to get great education at home and formal schooling doesn’t automatically make someone good at reading or writing. But it just seems unlikely that OP would’ve developed the skills he’s displayed given the upbringing he described. He doesn’t give the impression that his parents would’ve done a great job homeschooling him, and it would be difficult to teach yourself without a good foundation. Not impossible though.
I had a roommate in college who didn't have a birth certificate because her parents were hippie weirdos. Trying to get one in her twenties was a pain in the ass.
I get the feeling they are actual illegal immigrants fishing for ways they can try to explain their undocumented status. Too many different stories in the comments they are trying to test out.
That’s a good one too.