South Africa's one million invisible children without birth certificates

For reference, the US has procedures for this: https://www.usa.gov/citizenship-no-birth-certificate because people without birth certificates are still somewhat common, even children.

Vermont didn't require it until 1955!

My dad was born in the Philippines in 1939. He came over to the U.S. on a Taiwanese passport in 1959, part of a group of students that MIT imported from the Philippines based on letters of recommendation from their Atomic Energy Commission, and then bounced around on various visas for a decade. Finally got citizenship upon marrying my mom in 1971.

When McCain was running for president, there was a big court case about whether being born in the Canal Zone (a U.S. territory) qualified as being a "natural born citizen". And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?"

Moot point by then, he'd already been a citizen for ~40 years, and died the next year. But it was wild to think that the 10+ years of immigration hassles were basically due to an administrative fuck-up, and that legally, he should have had citizenship all along. The process you link wouldn't work for him, either, because the Philippines is not a U.S. territory now.

>And I made the connection - "Wait. The Philippines was a U.S. territory in 1939. Shouldn't dad have had birthright citizenship?"

Unless your dad was part of the elite ruling class which gets to skip and ignore all the rules, the answer is an emphatic no. However, if he was the son of an admiral from a long line of important people who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president, well, then Congress might just decide that he's good enough and give their stamp of approval to all of it.

Was your dad the son of an admiral who had been in the Senate for years and finally wanted to run for president?

Besides, the thing with McCain wasn't about whether he was a citizen or not... this was 100% the case. The trouble was that McCain didn't become a citizen until 3 years old. And "natural born citizen" can't happen for a kid who's already 3, nor can Congress pass laws that are ex post facto, meaning they couldn't retroactively declare him natural born. He was absolutely disqualified from running, and if he had had an ounce of decency he would have accepted that and quit pressing his claims.

McCain was the child of two citizen parents and thus a citizen at birth.

Legally, he was very much not a citizen at birth. You are simply incorrect. In the year in which he was born, children of citizen parents born overseas were not citizens at birth... that only changed 3 years later when Congress passed a law making it so.

At that point he became a citizen, and not before.

The Cable Act of 1934 allowed his mother to transmit citizenship by blood