As a last hurrah before I started my new job (one which involves a lot of travel, hence my discovery of FlyerTalk...HI!!!), my husband and I took a last minute trip to St. Croix, USVI, bringing along our 13 month old daughter.
We have flown with her many many times since her birth and have never once been asked for her birth certificate or for any other form of ID for her, or that proves our relationship to her. Until this trip.
We were surprised to discover a CBP checkpoint upon entry into STX for our departing flight...given that there are only 4 flights a day from STX, and they all land in either SJU or MIA - there simply isn't such a thing as an international flight from STX.
Upon reaching the CBP officer, he examined our boarding passes and DLs (no passports, since we never left the US...), and asked us for our daughter's birth certificate. I told him I didn't have it with us. He asked why not. I replied that I wasn't aware that we needed it, as we had never left the US. He asked, in a rather threatening voice "Well how do I know she's yours?". I was shocked, and stammered that we had brought her with us to visit family in St. Croix. At this point, I began to get upset, as his tone seemed to indicate that if we weren't able to somehow prove that she was our daughter, she would be taken from us...
at which point, US Territory or no, I would have caused an international incident. Our daughter sensed my anxiety and began to get upset herself, clinging to my neck and trying to get me to take her away from the checkpoint. The officer quite rudely told us to move along, and that 'next time you'd better have her birth certificate"...at which point we then moved to the next stage of the ridiculousness that is travel through STX, involving our suitcases being removed from the CBP/AG conveyor by persons unknown, and the sheer magnitude of indifference displayed over the matter by every single uniformed person to whom we alerted the problem...but that's another thread entirely.
My question here is this: given that we never left US soil, why was I supposed to have my daughter's birth certificate?
Moreover, her birth certificate does not have a photo, fingerprints, hand prints, foot prints, or any shred of information that links that particular piece of paper to her physical person. So what's the point? Were I a person of nefarious intent to kidnap a toddler who could be my clone and yet isn't my child, I could take any old birth certificate belonging to a child around the same age and use it.
