Eight-Year-Old Government Report Warned About Birth Certificate Fraud

An Inspector General's report for the Department of Health & Human Services warned in 2000 about the growing problem of birth certificate fraud. The IG undertook a study of the problem because of the growing problem of false identification and the use of birth certificates to unlawfully obtain government benefits. A key point the report makes is what a certified copy of a birth certificate provides proof of--only that a birth occurred and that it was recorded. Common misconceptions of what a birth certificate represents include the following:

• a birth certificate insures the identity and citizenship of the person holding it;


• birth certificates can be obtained only by the individual listed on the certificate or appropriate family members;


• if a birth certificate contains a crimped seal, it is "real";


• birth certificate information is always safeguarded when provided to user agencies or entities (e.g., sports managers); and


• lamination improves the integrity of birth certificates.

Let's take those in order with respect to Obama's alleged certificate of live birth. Obviously, even if the certificate is a genuine certificate of live birth issued by the State of Hawaii, it is not proof that Obama is a citizen, let alone a natural born citizen. Believe it or not, at least 14 states allow open access to birth certificate records, including states like California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Washington, Wisconsin and neighboring Kentucky. Unfortunately, Hawaii, like Indiana and most states, does not allow open access to birth records. What about the seal on Obama's birth certificate? It was only detectable on a copy photographed by FactCheck.org and not the scanned images displayed Fight The Smears and other pro-Obama sites. The other two points aren't relative to the discussion about Obama's birth certificate.

Perhaps the most important point the IG report makes is the difficulty in detecting a fraudulent birth certificate. "[T]echnological advances in the Internet, scanners, color printers, and copiers make it easier to obtain genuine birth certificates and create counterfeit ones," the report says. That's precisely the point Dr. Ron Polarik makes in his analysis of the Obama certificate of live birth claiming that it is a forged document. State practices create opportunities for fraud as well. One such practice is "delayed, amended, and midwife birth registrations that are based on affidavits of personal knowledge, include no documentary evidence, and are not often marked or overlaid accordingly." As has been pointed out, Hawaii law at the time of Obama's birth allowed parents to register a child's birth in Hawaii regardless of the place of birth if the parents represented that they had resided in the state for at least a year prior to the child's birth.

The reports notes there is little disincentive to commit birth certificate fraud. "Virtually all of the Federal and State agency staff we talked with indicate birth certificate fraud is seldom prosecuted unless it can be linked to large dollar losses or other punishable crimes," the report said. "Most staff also indicate that many prosecutors are reluctant, or refuse to take birth certificate fraud cases in which the only charge is attempting to obtain another individual’s birth certificate, or counterfeiting or altering a birth certificate." "At the same time, misconceptions exist surrounding the security and integrity of birth certificates."

The report makes a very important comment on the unreliability of birth certificates. "[G]enuine documents obtained with counterfeit birth certificates can be used to obtain genuine birth certificates." "Thus, it is inherently illogical to require someone to prove their identity using potentially fraudulent identity documents spawned by false birth certificates in order to obtain a birth certificate."

A final point was made about how easy many hospitals make it to learn about new births. On that, a new report on Free Republic today says an effort to learn at which hospital in Hawaii Obama was been born came up empty. Barry and his sister, Maya, can't agree on which hospital in Honolulu he was born. The report claims that more than a dozen hospitals were contacted, including the two identified by Obama and his sister, and they all said Obama was not born there. Whoops.