The following excerpt is from an excellent article which was on the front page of the December 25, 2012 edition of the Chicago Tribune. It’s quite a story – and worth clicking out to.
For most of her 90 years, all Josephine Stout knew about her arrival in America was that she came from Ireland as a baby.
It was a minor detail, a footnote, in a hardscrabble life filled with tragedy. But she never doubted she was an American, with full rights and privileges.
That changed in 1999, when Illinois officials handling Stout’s public aid asked her to prove her citizenship.She couldn’t.
She had no birth certificate, no passport, no voter registration card. She never even had a driver’s license. She did hold a Social Security card, but it didn’t help. She got it at age 17 when President Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act was in its infancy and anyone who applied got a card.
In an instant, she was an undocumented immigrant, desperately struggling to care for seven grandchildren but ruled ineligible for public aid.
“What did I know about being from Ireland?” said Stout. “I don’t even have an accent. I have always said, ‘I am an American, period.'”
As the country engages in a discussion about immigration reform and entitlements, Stout’s ordeal stands out as a story of vulnerability and charity. Cut off from public aid, Stout worked odd jobs, including collecting cans. Meanwhile, volunteers and government officials across two continents searched for her Irish birth certificate and the old ship manifest from her family’s journey to this country.
Together, Stout and those who came to her aid embarked on a 12-year odyssey to set the record straight, and to prove that she belonged.
Thanks to my friend, Linda Petrasek, for sending me the link to the article.
Read the article at the Chicago Tribune website.
