nethead

No a lot of grants/scholarships etc and most financial aid you need to be a USC to be eligible for.

Steve_

But grants and scholarships are private, they have no access to the SSA database. Federal financial aid draws no distinction between US citizens and LPRs, it cannot because it would violate the Civil Rights Act if it did. Title VI.

celticgrid

You are right! I had never registered the fact that there were dates on the front of the cards. Well, my 2 anyway - not anyone else in the family. So it is relatively new. A bit of checking shows that they introduced printing the issue date around October 2007, but I can't find out why? (Not a particularly important piece of information, but my curiosity persists...)

So, why is the date now printed? Does anyone know what practical purpose this achieves, or was supposed to achieve?

JAJ

Getting an unrestricted Social Security card should be top priority, for every new LPR. Not doing so exposes you to the kind of issues just described.

Steve_

To get everyone chattering about it.

RICH

I would guess a software update that simply allows it to be printed. They can, so they do. I reckon its fairly meaningless. The wording, or lack of, is the important part.

Steve_

Appears to be an anti-fraud measure. Says the internet.

MarylandNed

At the time of the financial aid application she was a USC - not a PR. So on the application she indicated that she was a USC. This is what the Dept of Education was trying to verify with the SSA. However, the SSA record did not indicate that she was a USC. So we all went into the local SSA office to have our records updated - except the youngest who was already flagged as a USC because she was born in the US. We were then issued new SSN cards with the record change date printed on the front. It did the trick because the following year when my 2nd daughter applied for financial aid as a USC, there were no issues.

MarylandNed

Right - and many people don't realize that they should also tell the SSA whenever they become USC's. Other government agencies use SSA records to verify US citizenship.

Steve_

So you're saying it was purely because of a mismatch between what was on the application and what was in the SSA database, even though in either case she would have qualified.



Talk about pointless bureaucracy.

ian-mstm

The same thing happened to me when I applied for a FAFSA loan for my PhD. SSA could not confirm that I was a USC because even though I had gone to SSA after naturalizing to update my info, it was not correctly updated. It was easy enough to get sorted, but caused a few weeks delay in processing the loan.

Ian

MarylandNed

Yes - there was a mismatch between our immigration status and our SSA records.

When my wife naturalized (she was sworn in 2 months before I was), our daughter became a USC by derivation. Previously we were all PRs and had unrestricted SSN cards. We simply didn't realize that, after naturalization, we had to update our SSA records to have ourselves flagged as USC's.

However, I guess there's no way for the Dept of Education (DoE) to know that my daughter was ever a PR. All they knew was that she was claiming to be a USC and so they tried to verify that with the SSA.

Bluegrass Lass

My hubby also had that problem. We actually did go to the SSA office to update his status after he naturalized. However, when he applied for FAFSA funds, they couldn't verify his new citizenship status. I can't really remember how it got resolved, but I think we actually ended up sending a copy of his naturalization certificate to the school's financial aid office. He also then called the SSA to verify his status, and I think they confirmed that he was indeed a citizen. But that was the year right after he changed from LPR to USC, and he hasn't had a problem with FAFSA since.

Curtis86

That is funny lol