Four years ago, when I had just about completed the lengthy legal and financial vetting process required by the U.S. government to place my then-92-year-old-mother in a nursing home, I was asked to produce her birth certificate as “proof” of her citizenship. While she was born in America, had voted in every election for untold decades, and paid her taxes religiously, that wasn’t good enough to qualify my elderly mother –deaf, legally blind, and confined to a wheelchair – to be admitted to the facility I had chosen for her near my home.
