update…further googling yeilds…no answer. hmmm. this is also the first question i’ve ever asked on ask-public that didn’t get responses amazingly fast. maybe steve will need a lawyer after all. the whole thing seems so silly. any major baddie from afar would obviously have really nice, fake, expensive documents, like any good spy. it’s ordinary, domestic folks—older folks esp—who get caught in such a bind. and why people think only people from somewhere else need watching is also beyond me. oh well, more googling. btw, “certificate of no birth”—did run across that, but is it a true thing? the site wants to be paid for their efforts, so i’m skeptical. when i was first in hawaii i hit the wateringholes and (gulp) lost my birth cert, keys, ID, and so on. never having left the mainland before, i had copies—on a cd rom. no one cares about that! four frustrating months later——still no replacements, couldn’t fly back to cali to get them in person—i was starting to despair that i’d never have ID again. eventually i was able to find a notary republic to sign off on me. this was because i’d become a friend, for months, of his next door neighbor. it was also just under a year after 911——and in all this time (tho i haven’t researched it) i’ve yet to hear how having no ID played any part in that. i’m pretty it didn’t. what i’ve learned so far online today is this: many people in their 60s and up were born at home, and never had a birth certificate to begin with. and it’s really complicating things when they need to renew drivers licences. sheesh.