Proposed forms for passport application

[asterroc]

q10 and seekingferret, you'll want to read this.

The US State Department is proposing a new Biographical Questionaire for everyone applying for a passport. The form would require all citizens to provide the name and contact info of all previous employers, the address of all previous residences, and addresses of all immediate family members (parents, step parents, siblings) and their citizenship status. In addition, naturalized citizens will need to provide the address of their place of birth, and anyone not born in a medical facility will also need to provide their mother's residence a year before and after your birth (presumably so the government can track those citizen children of fence-hoppers who wish to travel abroad), and contact info for witnesses (presumably so the government can strip your citizenship if you don't provide the info or if they're illegal immigrants who the government can bully into recanting the story of your birth in the US).

A lot more info is available here, including the full form and links to submit comments:
http://papersplease.org/wp/2011/03/18/state-dept-proposes-biographical-questionnaire-for-passport-applicants/

The comment I submitted:
The information requested by this document is ridiculous, and the gathering of the information is prohibitively difficult to obtain.  I am only 33 years old, but I have had six employers in five different states and it would take me around an hour to track down all their contact information. In addition I have lived at somewhere between 10 and 20 different residences and it is not possible for me to find all those addresses.  This high number of jobs and residences is primarily a result of my being in academia, and this form is systematically biased against academics and will stifle international cooperation and research as a result.  In addition, it will seriously hurt naturalized citizens and US-born citizens with foreign parents.  There is no need for this level of detail unless the government is deliberately attempting to prevent the movement of it's citizens, in violation of the UN charter of basic human rights.  

Edit: There is some question about whether this policy might only apply to people unable to provide traditional forms of proof of US citizenship, or whether it would really be all US citizens looking for a passport. There is also some question about the validity of the supposed form hosted at the above link. Unfortunately the .gov website doesn't actually contain any information about what it is we're supposed to be commenting on - what is the form, who would it apply to, etc.

Comments

[rosefox]

An ex-Army Intelligence friend of mine pointed out that it's more information than she had to give when getting her actual top secret clearance.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Then it's even worse than I thought! It looks like it's about exactly what I had to give the Air Force for mine - but that was a long time ago, and I don't remember the details. I was also just done with college, so my list of previous residences and employers was very short.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It seems from the link rosefox posted in her separate comment that this form is currently only being proposed to be used with people who cannot provide traditional proof of citizenship. For example, for the US citizen children of Mexican fence-jumpers (but who cares about them anyway, they don't deserve to be citizens, right?), for everybody living in a place where the records have been destroyed in a natural or man-made disaster (but it'll be obvious that they should be citizens - if they're white), or for citizens born abroad (but if your parents were that rich to be overseas when you were born I'm sure you'll get a good lawyer so it's okay to put you through hoops).

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes a little more sense. It still seems excessive, but not as thoroughly evil/stupid.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

It's about comparable to what my brother had to provide to get a low-level security clearance (internship at a defense contractor). (In addition, my brother had to list every time he'd left the country in the past 10 years, what dates he was gone, and where he stayed. Which was hard, because he was 19 and didn't remember much about some of the earlier family vacations. He also needed character references, of course.)