Yesterday, Marion Pringle, of Portland, Oregon, celebrated her 104th birthday at the Hollywood Towne House retirement home, still wondering if she could get her driver’s license approved.
She was not intending to use the driver’s license to actually drive herself around the town, of course, but simply to keep her medical records current, and to do so, she would need a valid driver’s license. She had not been able to have her driver’s license renewed because she was not able to present proof of her US citizenship, as it is apparently an Oregon state requirement now for a license.
Pringle is a US citizen by birth when she was born in 1906 to her US citizen parents. What made it a long lasting battle for her to establish that simple fact was because she was born not on the US soil but in Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada. Although she was subsequently brought back to the United States as a little girl, she never had proof of her citizenship. The challenge was due to the lack of documentary evidence and she finally overcame that major problem recently when a Census Records was fortunately found by the Oregon Historical Society, in support of her US citizenship claim.
The happy ending to the story was Pringle got a surprise visit at her 104th birthday celebration at the retirement home by some officials from the US Citizenship & Immigration Service (USCIS) who came to confirm Pringle's US citizenship, administered an oath and hand delivered her much belated yet much needed US citizenship certificate, a very special birthday present to the birthday girl.
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