Jimmy Klass is a 66-year-old Florida man who assumed he was an American citizen but found out differently when he went to collect Social Security benefits that he paid into his whole working life.
The Trump supporter’s mother is a Canadian who married a man from New York. His paternal grandparents are from Germany. He was told growing up that he was a U.S. citizen because his father was. Evidently, not so much at least according to government bureaucrats.
The Social Security Administration had sent a letter to Klass telling him to prepare to start receiving his benefits. But when he formally applied in 2020, he was informed that his benefits were “frozen,” according to News 6 Click Orlando.
“I got a notification that it was frozen because I hadn’t proven to them that I was here legally. That was their determination,” he recounted.
(Video Credit: ABC Action News)
Klass was shocked. He had been paying into Social Security for over six decades and voting in elections just like a regular American citizen.
The Floridian came to the U.S. when he was two years old in the 1960s.
“My dad’s roots were in Brooklyn, New York … And two years into my existence, they decided to load up the truck and move to Beverly, so to speak,” Klass told News 6. “We moved to Tennessee Avenue in Long Island, to be more specific. And we moved into the house next to my grandparents.”
Many years ago, Klass was granted eligibility to join the Marine Corps. He was also accepted as a police officer. Both ran background checks but no problems with his citizenship were uncovered.
“I was accepted, but I never took the jobs because I was newly married, had a kid on the way, just bought a house…” he explained, noting that he took a union job instead to provide for his family.
His father was American, born and raised in New York. This is Jimmy Klass’s house pic.twitter.com/Pl75ts1oOI
— Unlimited L’s (@unlimited_ls) May 16, 2024
Klass is a registered voter and has a Social Security card. He also has a valid driver’s license. He “acted like a regular citizen” because he had no reason to think he wasn’t one.
“I mean, I was accepted everything: photo ID card, I voted here,” Klass remarked. “Never, ever, ever came about where I was here illegally, even though Social Security says I didn’t prove it to them. They gave me my Government-run Medicare for over a year and a half.”
According to Klass, he’s voted in a number of elections which is a federal crime if you aren’t a citizen.
The thing that can never happen, already has been happening for 60 years?
— MarkTwang (@MarkTwang10) May 16, 2024
“Nobody showed up at my door to arrest me yet,” he mused. “But yeah, technically, if you vote, and you’re illegal — it’s federal charges.”
He has been spending his savings to prove that he is a U.S. citizen. Klass went to Immigration Services (USCIS) to sort things out, providing them with multiple documents that prove he’s been living in the country since he was a toddler.
“I’ve sent all that stuff to USCIS and they still denied me,” he sadly commented.
Klass turned to the Miami Canadian Consulate, who were also of no help.
“I’ve been spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to try to get my money that I paid into Social Security my entire life,” he said.
“I even said to them, ‘Well, if you’re not gonna pay me monthly, give me everything that I paid with interest, and we’ll call it a day’ and they go, ‘Oh, we can’t do that, either.’ I said, ‘Well, what can you do?’” Klass asked.
He has been forced to go back to work because of the cost of trying to prove he is an American in order to get his benefits. Klass has created a GoFundMe account to raise money so he can hire an attorney and a genealogist to go up against the USCIS concerning his benefits. The agency refuses to comment on the situation.
If this guy’s father is his biological father, and meets the conditions of 8 U.S. Code § 1401(g), he is a citizen. It’s not surprising that the bureaucracy could screw this up.
And with ~40 million criminal aliens in the country, this guy isn’t the problem.
— Gunning Bedford II (@DavidNoble39930) May 16, 2024
“As a matter of practice, and due to privacy considerations, USCIS does not comment on individual immigration cases, and the agency does not share, confirm, or deny immigration information about specific individuals. We adjudicate each application on a case-by-case basis to determine if it meets all standards required under the law. Applicants receive a written decision in the mail, which fully explains our action and lists any appeal rights,” USCIS told News 6.
“A child born abroad automatically becomes a US citizen if at least one parent is an American citizen, the child is under 18, a lawful permanent resident, and residing in the US under the legal and physical custody of the US citizen parent, according to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000,” the New York Post reported.
The law was not in effect when Klass came to America as a child but there is tentatively a constitutional argument that since his father is American and they lived in the country for decades, he has a right to citizenship. In fact, he may be entitled to dual Canadian-American citizenship but it will likely require an expensive legal fight in court.
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Author: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
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