boring update

[scrottie]

So, CA DMV moved on to denying me any kind of ID card because my birth certificate didn't have an embossed seal on it. This was after they were rejecting everything else and I had shown them the birth certificate with the embossed seal so many times that the weak spot created by the violently embossed seal caused it to start to separate. This last visit, after going through hell with buggy, insane 3rd party online ID vendors and 3D flashing light photos of myself and my ID and guessing incorrect Equifax data about not-actually-myself, and the NY postal service fucking me yet again, I finally managed a replacement social security card, the previous of which I had also warn out in part from presenting it to the CA DMV so many times it wore through.

As part of this, the DMV staff kept saying "we need your *original* birth certificate". I found my actual first original birth certificate with my baby feet stamped on it, in a family photo album. It turns out that they do not in fact want my original birth certificate. It does not have an embossed seal. It has a non-embossed seal. Specifically, it has a star sticker, that is embossed.

Anyway... the original birth certificate did not have the correct embossed seal, and the one I was using after that did not, and the one after that did not, so I got one and it had the embossed seal, then I wore it out trying to get a driver's license, then went back and forth and back and forth with $state to get another one... and it does not have an embossed seal.

fml.

And no, showing the DMV five generations of birth certificates does nothing to restore the broken magic of one and only ever embossed seal. One of these is like a photographic print of the microfilm of the birth certificate record.

I don't even like driving. I'm just trying to avoid even more problems down the proverbial road by trying to diligently do the normal usual expected things people do in this society. There are so many things I could be doing instead of this.

Comments

[slydevil]

I just sent in my passport for renewal, and then realized that the I-9 requires an embossed seal birth certificate too, which mine also doesn't have. Maybe it's optimistic to think I might get a job offer in the next two months, but here's to shitty bureaucratic hoops.

[rebeccmeister]

Which DMV have you been attempting to visit?

CA might have been the absolute worst, out of: Arizona, Texas, CA, NY. Texas was second-worst. New York wasn't that much better; the first attempt, they got me well through the paperwork shuffle before discovering something inadequate. I think that was the DMV office in El Cerrito.

I wonder if there are lawyers who do advocacy for the homeless who help people with this stuff.

[scrottie]

Mostly the El Cerrito one, including going in there in the past when I'd house-guested with L&R, but it occurred to me that that one might just be extra bad and a more rural one might be better, so I tried Lodi. Same thing.