Last week was the week I didn’t exist.<\/p>\n
Well, I<\/i> knew I existed, but I couldn’t prove it to anyone. The document that confirms<\/span> my identity was out of my hands.<\/p>\n Renewing<\/span> a US passport used to be a speedy affair<\/span>: I’d walk into the consulate here in Munich and walk out two hours later with a new document. Now they insist on<\/span> sending it to you in the mail. You have to wait two weeks to get it.<\/p>\n So I waited, thinking of the things I couldn’t do in that time. I couldn’t leave Germany, obviously<\/span>. I couldn’t claim<\/span> any packages at the post office, so I couldn’t order anything online. I couldn’t perform any major transactions at the bank \u2014 not even exchange currency<\/span>. And I couldn’t be stopped by the police for any reason.<\/p>\n In Germany, my passport is my only official form of identification<\/span> and proof of residency. Showing my press pass or my library card wouldn’t really have the same effect.<\/p>\n I’m very aware of this because once, on a trip to Poland, an American I was traveling with lost her passport, along with the other contents of her wallet<\/span>. At the consulate, the only easy way to prove her identity was by witness<\/span> \u2014 with a statement<\/span> from me \u2014 because I still had my passport.<\/p>\n Oddly enough<\/span>, with that same passport, I was barely<\/span> allowed back into the US. Through heavy use, the page with my photo on it was starting to come apart. Could someone who looked a little like me have slipped in<\/span> a different photo? All the border official could do was rely on<\/span> the rest of the document and ask me (sternly<\/span>) where I was born, how old I was and what countries I’d visited in recent years.<\/p>\n We tend to forget that our identity is given to us by others. At the hospital where we are born, we trust<\/span> that the nurse sends us home with the right parents. A birth certificate from a US authority counts as proof of citizenship, but not of identity. A driver’s license<\/span> in the US counts as proof of identity, but not of citizenship. We put our signature<\/span> on everything, but it takes an expert to compare it accurately.<\/p>\n The first passport I ever got, I had sent for by mail. The passport office took my word for it<\/span> (and that of a notary public<\/span>) that the photo I’d sent them was really of me. (They’re a bit smarter now and require applicants<\/span> to appear in person.) My new passport is biometric, but the only biometric data it contains is the shape of my face \u2014 based on a photo I took myself. (US citizens aren’t required to submit<\/span> the iris scans and fingerprints that they demand of foreign visitors.)<\/p>\n The new passport is based on the old passport; the one before that was based on other documents that relied on other people’s judgement or eyesight. So identity is not something we have through a single document; it’s something we create through a trail<\/span> of documents. Along with other records<\/span> that rely on those documents, they form a pattern \u2014 a pattern of movement, of residency, of purchases, of medical history.<\/p>\n If all else fails, there is one thing that every American can resort to<\/span>: a secret code. Each of us has memorized<\/span> a unique<\/span> nine-digit<\/span> number that we don’t reveal<\/span> to anyone except our bank, our employer and the government. Had I not been with my friend in Poland, her Social Security<\/span> number would have unlocked access to her other documents. Mine is what I would have recited<\/span> last week. Fortunately, I didn’t have to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week was the week I didn’t exist. Well, I knew I existed, but I couldn’t prove it to anyone. The document that confirms my identity was out of my hands. Renewing a US passport used to be a speedy affair: I’d walk into the consulate here in Munich and walk out two hours later with a new document. Now … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[193,63,105],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1725,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/1725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Others give us our identity<\/h2>\n