104-year-old Portland woman gets carded

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/02/104-year-old_portland_woman_ge.html

The 15,000 Oregonians who renew their driver's licenses or state ID cards every month should take a tip from Marion Pringle of Portland: Even if you've been a citizen for 104 years, better find the document that proves it.

Last month, Pringle learned that her license was about to expire and she needed to renew it to keep her medical records current. But as of July 2008, Oregon requires proof of citizenship to obtain that ID -- and Pringle didn't have it.

She was born in Vancouver, B.C., but her parents were U.S. citizens. Her father worked the railroads and died when Pringle was a girl, and her mother brought her and a brother to her mother's hometown, Portland. Another brother stayed in Vancouver.

Pringle never left the United States after that, so she never got a passport. She voted in Oregon elections and eventually collected Social Security. She renewed her driver's license religiously; she was driving until four years ago, and she said Tuesday that it was "terrible" to surrender her blue 1979 Volkswagen Beetle that she'd bought new.

---more @ link---

Here she is, taking her oath of citizenship:

kind of bureaucratic obtuseness. :)

I read the article....
that makes no sense. Since they were able to prove her parents were citizens, shouldn't that be enough?


Also, wtf are people who are legal residents/legal workers supposed to do...they can't drive now???

But I am delighted that she has.

:)

To renew her driver's license. She doesn't drive much any more, just to the grocery store, but it is scary to think of her on the road. It is more frightening to think of my Dad on the road, so we let Mom keep her license to keep him from driving.

Mom has a problem with her Social Security that will probably roll over to her driver's license. Not only does her official birth certificate read "Unnamed female child Tucker" her birthday on the newly issued certificate is different from the date she has always known was her birth date. She went through school, the military, a career, and her whole life with one birthday and now the state where she was born says she's wrong. No matter that her birth certificate she had for all those years, issued by that state, has the date she has always known. Now they insist she is wrong. I think some clerk hit the wrong keys when they entered it in the computer.

The real tragedy is that she and Dad had the same birthday and now Alabama is trying to take that away from them. :cry:

She is notorious. And you can have 10 different documents that show you're a citizen, including federal student loan papers, but if you don't have the items on the list - no Oregon drivers license. It's crazy.

their documentation checked. Any "i" not dotted, any "t" not crossed..and immediate rejection. One must be held to precisely, if not higher, standards that they require of others.

One thing "out of line", she's removed from the job and not permitted to work for any government entity for life...:evilgrin:

It appears this woman has a wonderful sense of humor and joy of life....:D

be unable to prove citizenship for voting when voter ID laws started to be the rage a few years ago - and some of us suggested it was a real concern, and a de facto poll tax?

This lady still has her wits about her, and the resources (financial and familial) to establish her citizenship and get the photo ID that she would have been denied had she not been able to prove it. There are others (generally with fewer resources) who may not be able overcome such hurdles.

When I went to renew my license I was told that "My citizenship status was in question"
I was born in Austria to an Austrian mother and American father. My birth was registered at the time at the American Embassy in Vienna. As a baby I had an American passport while my mother had Austrian papers when we went from one sector of Vienna to another(Vienna was occupied into sectors like Berlin).
I am an American citizen by birth but evidently TX Homeland Security didn't think so. I had to dig up my original Austrian birth certificate(with English translation), my State Department form DS-1350, and a pile of other paperwork.
And then I still had to argue with them. I pointed out that I enlisted in the United States Air Force and had a Top Secret clearance and they didn't demand all this crap that they now want for a driver's license. Their question at that point was how did I get a license without all this-my reply "They didn't ask for all this back in 1974 when I moved to TX.
They didn't like my comment that this was a DRIVER's license and NOT a US citizenship card.