A shocking revelation turned the retirement plans of James “Jimmy” Klass, a 66-year-old Florida resident of Clearwater, upside down. After spending 64 years living in the United States, paying taxes, voting in federal elections, and contributing to Social Security, he learned that he wasn’t an American citizen when he applied for Social Security retirement benefits and was denied.
“I’m overwhelmed, my anxiety level is through the roof,” Klass told PEOPLE. “Here’s a man who’s lived 64 years, and I’ve paid for it, you know what I mean?” The discovery came as a complete shock to someone who lived their whole adult life believing he was an American citizen.
The citizenship confusion
Klass’s case raises complex issues of American citizenship as they pertain to children born elsewhere of American parents. He was born in Canada of a Canadian mother and an American father and immigrated to the United States when he was only two years old during the 1960s. His father was a natural-born U.S. citizen from Brooklyn, New York, while his paternal grandparents were from Germany.
“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 explained. “We moved to Tennessee Avenue in Long Island, to be more specific. And we moved into the house next to my grandparents.”
Currently, as per U.S. citizenship laws, a child born outside the United States to one U.S. citizen parent can acquire citizenship if the U.S. citizen parent had spent at least five years in the U.S. before the child’s birth, with two years of that time following the attainment of age 14. However, the USCIS said in a letter written last year that Klass did not have enough proof of residency for his father during the relevant time period.
A lifetime of assumed citizenship
For years, of what he knew to be “a regular citizen,” Klass used an apt social security number, driver’s license, and voter registration card: this was without ever asking or clarifying anything about his citizenship status. Even the Marine Corps and police department recognized him as one of them, the latter offering him the position, which he rejected owing to family obligations.
“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. The military and law enforcement jobs require an extensive background check, but none ever revealed any citizenship problems.
Klass voted in innumerable federal elections during his lifetime, which is otherwise a federal crime for an unauthorized person to commit. “Nobody has shown up at my door to arrest me,” Klass joked. “But yeah, technically, if you vote, and you’re illegal, it’s federal charges”.
The social security shock
The judgment on Klass’s claims was as of 2020, and he showed up at the Social Security office to apply for retirement benefits. The Social Security Administration greeted him warmly with notice that such was the place to send him: “They sent me a letter that said, ‘Oh, you’re eligible,’ you know? Yada-yada-yada. You’ll get your first check the second Wednesday of January 2020,” he narrated.
Instead of receiving any amount that was due to him, he instead got notice that his payments had been frozen. “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 said, though he hadn’t had any trouble with Medicare benefits for more than a year and a half.
“I feel that they’re robbing me,” Klass expressed his frustration to PEOPLE about the government’s handling of the situation. That is why the government is not paying this citizen who has paid into Social Security throughout his entire working life, in anticipation of such benefits in retirement.
The issue of accidental Americans
Klass’s case is both complicated and characteristic of the much broader issue of “Accidental Americans”-which is legally considered by American law to be U.S. citizens, but some may not find out about it until later in life. Most situations have to do with people born in the U.S. and had left as a baby, or children born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent under certain conditions.
Many accidental Americans learn their status only when they meet obstacles at home with banking services, are not granted entry to the U.S. using foreign passports, or face issues with government benefits. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 indeed streamlined citizenship processes, but again it applies only to those individuals who were under 18 years old when the law went into effect in 2001.
Legal and financial problems
The case of Klass faces multiple legal challenges. There are situations in which Social Security benefits may be paid to non-citizens, but benefits require documentation demonstrating legal presence in the United States. The Social Security Administration would on the base of that fact ask specific evidence of identity, age, and citizenship status before giving benefits approval.
Klass contacted Senator Marco Rubio’s office for assistance and hired a genealogist in search of records that could prove his father’s required U.S. residency. The whole process has caused Klass financial strain, which has led him to set up a GoFundMe page for covering legal expenses and financial loss.
“I’m starting a GoFundMe because the United States government will not pay me my Social Security that I paid for my whole life, as they say that I am not here legally despite being here for 64 years,” he wrote on the page.
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