Is it illegal to withhold someone&#39;s passport and green card in California? June 17, 2019 - My uncle's daughter is the petitioner in Beaumont California (father and daughter relationship). Before my uncle left the daughter's house, He asks for his Philippine passport and U.S. alien-green-card but the daughter didn't give my uncle's IDs. So my uncle left together with his brother to live permanently in Vallejo, California. How can my uncle get his passport and green card back? Update - July 06, 2019 My uncle and his brother went back to Beaumont and called a Police Officer to help out to get my uncle's personal ID's but my uncle's daughter didn't give back his ID's (Philippine passport, &amp; Alien/green-card). Her reason to the police officer was since she was the petitioner, she is responsible for his dad (my uncle) and the only he can get it back his ID's is when he return's to the Philippines for good. Can we file in the city of Beaumont for small claims court to get his personal property back? What are the procedures to file? What forms do we need to use? My uncle is not fluent in English speaking, can we request a translator? Thank you in advance for all your help.
The green card should always be at hand Yeah, he can't do that. He needs a green card in his possession anytime he's not on private property. Obviously for instance leaving it in the gym locker while you're at the gym is ok, but no, you can't dash off to the grocery store without it, on the logic that it's "just in town". Just like I can't make a milk run without my driver's license. So this idea of dashing off on a 400 mile adventure, is Right Out. He should have absolutely refused to travel without the documents in hand. If they say "get off the property or we'll call the cops", then tell the cops "I can't leave without my passport/green card" which the cops will back up, because they know the law and they know how trafficking works. The right to strut around the USA without any ID at all is reserved for US citizens only, and even that is being stripped away by ever-changing laws. Those documents are someone else's property The Green Card is the property of the USA and is not hers to steal. The passport is the property of the Philippine government and is not hers to steal. She didn't take your stuff, she took theirs. So she is guilty of a Federal crime, and the long arm of Philippine law may have an "opinion" on the matter also. Of course, most people don't think of it that way. They think your ID is your property so they think they're only messing with you. I would absolutely, positively report theft of the passport to the Philippine consulate. (Or rather, just report a missing passport, and be free about explaining the circumstances). One might hope that a phone call to consular staff might scare her straight, and get her to send it along. Most likely the green card would be in there also. Or, he could pay the fees to have a replacement passport issued. However the important one is the Green Card, since that establishes your right to be in the USA. On that one, you must consult an immigration lawyer and find out what you need to do. You certainly can get replacement green cards (not cheap), but admitting you don't have yours could cause you problems. People often seize documents for a reason And what makes me think that is, the uncle is a grown adult and the daughter's elder, and I thought that meant something in the Philippines. He is supposed to be more adult and more responsible. As such, he should be responsible for his own documents. Yet, this seems to be in the daughter's hands; this raises red flags. Maybe what she did was a harmless prank. But usually, taking an immigrant's documents is done for an entirely evil reason. Either they are forcing them into indentured servitude (also called "trafficking") - so if he is now in a situation where he is being extorted to do work in a worse situation or worse wage than he'd take willingly, then he is a trafficking victim, and the taking documents is part of the plot. The US has some legal protections for trafficking victims. Or they are "setting him up" for failure in some other way - for instance, out of idle malice, the niece might be planning to call immigration and report him as being illegal, hoping he'd be found with no green card, and deported for not having it.
Your options are generally limited by where you have (or can establish) residency, along with where your communal property is held. There are (decreasing numbers of) jurisdictions known as "divorce mills" that have notoriously lenient rules for establishing residency and completing divorces.
People often use &quot;passport&quot; as a metonym of &quot;citizenship,&quot; but that should not lead one to mistake the two. Notably, many US citizens live their entire lives without having a passport. A fairly brief search didn't turn up an explicit statement from an official government source that passport revocation does not affect US citizenship, but that is quite clearly the case if one reads between the lines of the fairly sizeable statutory and regulatory provisions governing both. Nationality law is codified at 8 USC 1401 and following, with the sections governing loss of nationality beginning at 8 USC 1481. The regulations concerning nationality generally are found at 8 CFR 301 and following, but there are not many regulations concerning loss of nationality. Passport law is found in an entirely different title of the US Code, and titles are the highest level of division in the code. It is in 22 USC 411 and following. There are provisions that restrict eligibility for a passport scattered around in there without any section applying specifically to passport revocation. That is found in the related regulations. Passport regulations are codified at 22 CFR Part 51, with revocation being the subject of Subpart E, which is 51.60 and following. There may be an explicit statement in the regulations that passport revocation does not affect citizenship. I did not look very thoroughly. But a bit of logical reasoning shows why it must be so: The conditions for loss of US nationality are very well defined. They are also fairly tightly circumscribed by several decisions of the US supreme court in the decades following the second world war. The conditions for revocation of a passport are much less strict; as an example, a passport may be revoked under 22 CFR 51.62 and 51.60 if the bearer &quot;is the subject of an outstanding Federal warrant of arrest for a felony, including a warrant issued under the Federal Fugitive Felon Act (18 U.S.C. 1073).&quot; US nationality is required to hold a US passport, but US nationals do not need to have a US passport. Therefore, a US passport may be revoked for a reason that cannot lead to loss of US nationality, and, when that happens, US nationality is retained. The condition mentioned in point 2 is clearly insufficient for depriving someone of US nationality, not least because the subject of an arrest warrant is only suspected of having committed a crime. Depriving a suspect of their liberty is acceptable to the extent necessary to bring that person to trial, but further deprivations beyond that end would violate the constitution's guarantee of due process. A word on &quot;nationality&quot; and &quot;citizenship&quot; in US law is in order, lest the use of the two terms seem inconsistent or arbitrary. US nationality is broader than US citizenship. All US citizens are US nationals, so loss of US nationality implies loss of US citizenship. However, there are some people who are US nationals without being US citizens, so it is more precise to speak of &quot;loss of nationality&quot; than &quot;loss of citizenship,&quot; and indeed that is the term used in US nationality law.
You ask if your deceased brother's green card may be legally used by another person. The answer is: no.
health care checks. Hotel check in. Employment? maybe. Background Checks? doesn't matter. It actually does matter, because there is sometimes a law governing the documents that may be shown for a given purpose. For example, the I-9 form, for verifying someone's eligibility to accept employment in the US, has a well defined lists of documents that an employer must accept, and the passport card is one of those documents. A similar situation exists for Transportation Security Administration screening of air passengers. On the other hand, laws concerning proof of age for buying various products will vary from state to state, and retailers may or may not be required to accept any particular document. In the case of alcohol sales in North Carolina, for example, there is a brochure that lists "acceptable forms of identification" on page 17 and explicitly says that "passports may be in the booklet or card form." But that does not seem to create a legal requirement for the retailer to accept passport cards, because page 19 outlines the retailer's right to refuse, saying among other things that "there is no legal recourse by a customer who you have refused a sale." US passport law (22 USC Chapter 4 and 22 CFR parts 51 and 53) doesn't have anything to say about the passport's or passport card's role as an identification document; it speaks only of the more specific role as a travel document. So the general answer to your question, appears to be no. There is no law generally requiring people to accept a passport card if they also accept passports or driver's licenses. But in most specific instances, there may be a general requirement such as "government-issued identification" that includes passport cards in addition to passports and driver's licenses, or there may be a list that explicitly includes passport cards along with driver's licenses and passports.
There is no general law making it illegal to lie about debts, or anything else. It is illegal to lie to a law enforcement officer in the course of an investigation. (And of course it is illegal to lie in court testimony or when otherwise under oath.) But it is in no way unlawful to decline to answer, unless a proper court order has been obtained, or other lawful means of compelling an answer. I would expect any law office to respond to such a question with something like "Am I/we being investigated? If so, send the appropriate notice and our lawyer will consider what we should tell you. If not, tell us what information you want, and we will consider and provide a written response in due course." If a taxpayer has been found to be delinquent in paying taxes, in some cases a court order may be obtained seizing assets, including unpaid debts. But no IRS agent can make such a claim on the spot, and indeed for a client to make such a payment without such a court order, or the order of an IRS tribunal (or the creditor's written consent) would itself be unlawful and would subject the lawyer to a suit by the PI (Private Investigator). When the lawyer pays a service provider, a 1099 must be filed with the IRS. If the PI is a corporation, a different form is used, but a record of payment is still required. As failure to timely file such a form is a violation of the tax code, an accusation of paying without filing would permit the lawyer to decline to answer under the Fifth amendment. If the lawyer did pay and did file a 1099 or other documentation, the IRS would know what had been payed, and would not need to confront the PI. Also, as the comment by Hilmar points out, a PI would be likely to use the cash accounting method, and so would own no tax on work performed but unpaid (as yet). So unless the IRS agent thinks the PI was paid "off-the books" and is intentionally failing to report the payment, there would be no point to such a question. And if that were he case, the lawyer would be very likely to decline to answer. I find the story quite implausible.
We need to assume that the stop was legal (not a high hurdle to clear), that is, there was some reason to stop you. Even so, following Utah v. Strieff, police don't actually have to have a reasonable suspicion to stop you and if in the course of an ID check they discover that you have a warrant out for your arrest, the arrest is still legal. So if the police stop you, RCW 46.61.020(1) says: It is unlawful for any person while operating or in charge of any vehicle to refuse when requested by a police officer to give his or her name and address and the name and address of the owner of such vehicle, or for such person to give a false name and address, and it is likewise unlawful for any such person to refuse or neglect to stop when signaled to stop by any police officer or to refuse upon demand of such police officer to produce his or her certificate of license registration of such vehicle, his or her insurance identification card, or his or her vehicle driver's license or to refuse to permit such officer to take any such license, card, or certificate for the purpose of examination thereof or to refuse to permit the examination of any equipment of such vehicle or the weighing of such vehicle or to refuse or neglect to produce the certificate of license registration of such vehicle, insurance card, or his or her vehicle driver's license when requested by any court. Any police officer shall on request produce evidence of his or her authorization as such. There is no law that says "you have to provide ID only if accused of a crime", or "police can pull you over only if you are suspected of a crime". Various traffic infractions will get you pulled over but are not crimes; random sobriety checks are legal. However, note that the requirement to provide ID applies to the operator. There is no law requiring citizens to carry identification papers (but there is a law requiring a vehicle operator to carry a specific form of ID). In some states there are "stop and identify" laws which allow police to demand ID from a person suspected of a crime, but Washington does not have such a law.
@DaleM isn't wrong, but some elaboration is in order. You (almost always) gain your citizenship (or nationality) in the first instance, at birth, without the agreement or assent of you or your parents. It is thrust upon you. Usually, your country of citizenship must consent to end your citizenship (or authorize you to do so unilaterally) under that country's laws. Once you have citizenship or nationality, in practice, in most countries, you can generally only renounce your citizenship if you contemporaneously or already have a citizenship somewhere else. You are at a minimum strongly dissuaded from doing so and are not a sympathetic candidate for relief under laws related to statelessness if you willfully put yourself in this position knowing the consequences. This is a feature of the citizenship laws of most countries in order to implement international treaties designed to prevent statelessness which are widely adopted. When an adult is naturalized as a citizen of a new country, usually, their old citizenship is revoked by operation of law under the laws of their old country. In many countries, including the U.S., there are high fees and tax consequences for renouncing your citizenship. Any potential tax liabilities in the future that were not yet due under U.S. law (e.g. capital gains taxes an appreciated assets not yet sold, and estate taxes that would be due if the person renouncing their citizenship had died on that date) are owed immediately upon applying to renounce your citizenship. A stateless person is, subject to quite narrow exceptions, still subject to all of the laws of the place where they are located, including almost all of its criminal laws (except treason) and its tax laws (at least on income earned in that country). A stateless person lacks many rights. They can't travel internationally (there are exceptions under treaty in some cases, but obtaining those rights is cumbersome at a minimum). They can't vote. They typically aren't entitled to domestic welfare state benefits like national health insurance, disability payments, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, old age or retirement benefits, etc. They can't work in a licensed or regulated profession. They may not even be able to sign a lease. They may not be allowed to own a company or serve as an officer or director of a company or as a trustee of a trust. They aren't entitled to diplomatic assistance. There are many fraudulent legal movements such as the &quot;sovereign citizen movement&quot; (and the Moorish Sovereign Citizens) that assert that citizenship is voluntary and that just by disavowing it in some official feeling way, they can be exempt from taxes, court jurisdiction, and/or other laws. This is false and people who act on this fraudulent misinformation often suffer serious legal consequences as a result.