MATCHING FOOTPRINTS: FIRST TIME ADULT AMCIT APPLICANTS FROM IRAQ AND IRAN, IN SYRIA

UNCLAS DAMASCUS 000765 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: CPAS KFRD KWMN ASEC SY IZ IR SUBJECT: MATCHING FOOTPRINTS: FIRST TIME ADULT AMCIT APPLICANTS FROM IRAQ AND IRAN, IN SYRIA ¶1. A growing number of men in their early-to-mid 20s who claim to have been born in the United States are now applying for their first U.S. passports. Of the six individuals in the last two weeks, five came to Syria from Iraq (including two brothers) and one from Iran. One of the Iraqis was previously refused a passport by Embassy Cairo due to lack of credible identity documents. ¶2. In every case, the applicant had a purportedly genuine U.S. birth certificate, along with supporting materials including old family passports and documents related to his parents' presence in the U.S. at the time of the birth. The said documentation appears to be valid in most cases, leaving the troublesome matter of identity to be resolved. Family records and photograph chains can be used to verify that the baby in the U.S. photos and the man in the interview booth are the same person, however, in the case of the Iraqi documents, the poor quality of the S series passports, identity cards and citizenship certificates still can leave doubt as to the identity of the applicant. Is it the same person, or a similar-looking relative? In one recent case, the applicant asked us to take a print of his foot to see if it matched the baby footprint on the birth certificate. ¶3. Most applicants claimed that because of fears of political repression, when the parents returned to their home countries they were afraid to advertise the American identity of their children. Therefore, they obtained local (i.e. Iraqi or Iranian) birth certificates and documentation for the boys and apparently hid their U.S. records. The result is fully documented foreign nationals claiming birth in the US. The poor quality and procedures used in Iraq and Iran during the 1980s add to the problem, because possibly legitimate documents are difficult to distinguish from fraudulent ones. We anticipate that regional conditions will cause the number of these applications to increase.