People Who Don't Officially Exist (ID Issues; Outside 'The System')

[Mighty_Emperor]

The man who doesn't exist

Jim Lee has no birth certificate, passport, or bank account. He has never voted or registered with a doctor. To officialdom, he is invisible. Now, after 68 years, he has decided to be somebody - but, as Simon Hattenstone discovers, it's not that easy...

Friday April 30, 2004
The Guardian

Jim Lee is sitting in a corner by himself, minding his own. He's a little, anonymous kind of fella. Too anonymous, according to social services, who have ruled that Lee is officially a non-person. Or to be more accurate, he's unofficially a non-person, because he doesn't exist.

Lee has no documentation to prove who he is. He doesn't have a birth certificate. He doesn't have a national insurance number. He has never had a passport, or a bank account. He has never been registered with a doctor, and he has never been on the electoral roll. There is nothing to prove he is who he says he is - 68-year-old Jim Lee from London.

For years, it didn't matter. It never crossed his mind that he could be a non-person. He had managed to get through much of his childhood and all of his adult years working outside the system, earning just enough to see himself right. But then he reached his late 60s and discovered people weren't giving him work any more, telling him that he was too old. He ran out of money, ran into trouble, and decided to visit a benefits office for the first time in his life. And that's when everything went wrong.

We meet at Deptford's 999 Club, a drop-in centre in south-east London. Over the past few months, it has been Lee's refuge - it is here that he comes in the morning for a bit of a chat and tea and toast, and it is here where the management has been trying to help him sort his life into sufficient order to enable him to qualify for a pension and housing benefits.

He says he doesn't have many memories of his childhood. His parents were travellers and he was born in a field in Kent. He never knew his father, and he remembers his mother saying she didn't want anything to do with him when he was about four years old. He has no picture of her - literal or mental - and does not resent her. In fact, he says he understands perfectly well how she felt; he has always been a loner himself, and has lived a life free of baggage. His childhood blurs - no, he didn't go to school; yes, he did live by himself when he left his mother; no, adults didn't take him in, but yes, somehow he could make ends meet. He's not sure how, but he did. "I learned to poach rabbits and fish and cook for myself."

He reckons he must have been about 12 when he started to work the markets in south-east London. Does he wish he had gone to school? "No, not really. By the time I was working the markets I didn't care about other kids." Well, actually, he says, if he could have his time over again, there are things he would do differently. "I'd make sure I had ID. Everybody's got ID, but I haven't and I can't puzzle that out."

He says he never went long without work, and employers didn't ask for information he couldn't provide. "I worked the markets, the buildings, the fairs, the circuses - mainly doing building work." He is proud that he has never been on the dole.

He travelled all over the country working. "There was Norwich in the 50s. And then in the early 60s I was up in Liverpool, building." Then he went to Glasgow. "Only for two weeks. I didn't think much of it. Then I went down to Devon and Cornwall. Very nice! Especially when the weather was good."

He has lived in pubs, barns and boarding houses and for 15, maybe 20 years, he was on the streets. He says it wasn't as simple as not being able to afford accommodation, it was the unpredictability of his financial situation. "One week I had money, the next I didn't. I couldn't turn round and say I'll get digs because I never knew what would be happening the next week."

Until recently, Lee has never needed to provide proof of who he is. He didn't want to travel abroad so there was no need for a passport. He didn't get in trouble with the police. He didn't drive. "I have a nice little bus pass which costs £9.50, but all you need is a photo. You give them your photo and they take your money, and that is it."

Lee says he has never had close friends. Has he had girlfriends? "No." Never? "Well, I had girlfriends like two weeks, three weeks, a month, and then they went their way and I went my way." Did he never feel like settling down with somebody? "Naaah. I've always been a loner. I didn't want to be stuck with something I couldn't handle. It's like debts. Some married people get in debt and they can't get out of it. But I didn't want that. I wanted to be meself, and to look after meself, so I had enough money and didn't go into debt. I was terrified of debt."

He says he always wanted to be straight with the world - the world didn't owe him anything, and he didn't owe the world anything. Only he did, as he was to discover.

Last year, Lee broke his leg. "I fell off the back of a lorry. It was my fault." He grins. He was taken to hospital. (Although he says he has never taken anything out of the system, Lee has received NHS treatment three times.) Three days later, he was back on the streets. This time, he says, with his leg still broken, and getting on for 70, he really did find it tough. Building-site bosses saw him as an old man, and legislation had tightened up so more and more employers were asking for papers. He dropped in on Deptford's 999 drop-in centre and the people there decided to help him fight for his rights - which is when they found he had none because, according to the state, he didn't exist. He was an invisible man.

Adrian Spalding, the centre's administrator, says: "For the past nine months we have tried to get him his national insurance number, which will give him an identity and guarantee him housing and a pension. The pensions office has given us a temporary number, which is his birthdate in February 1936, but it was issued for a post office that was closed and we've sent that back to them, and we've had no more word from them. They still maintain at his latest interview that he has no identity that they can accept so we really are back to square one."

Spalding is appalled by the way that Lee has been bureaucratised into a non-person. "Yes, Jim hasn't paid any tax into the system, but I think as a society we have to accept that things occasionally go haywire, and we've got to be caring enough as a society to accept these people."

The Department of Work and Pensions says that it has to guard against people such as Lee who have worked cash in hand and have, in effect, defrauded the country. In the meantime, Lewisham council has temporarily housed him, but says that it will only be able to provide permanent housing if he can get a national insurance number.

Lee accepts he has not done things the right way, and says he is sorry about that, but he repeats that he has not taken from the state. Until now, he has never claimed any benefit. In fact, he says, he mistrusted all the people he met in pubs drinking away while talking about the dole. He doesn't have a clue what will happen to him if ID cards become compulsory.

Lee explains that since he stopped working he spends most of the days on the buses - three, four hours in the drop-in centre and the rest of the day on a nice, warm bus. Today, he's going up north. "I've been as far out as Romford. Good market, that. I get off, have a walk around. Highbury is my favourite bit of London. There's a pub there called the Twelve Pins. They serve a nice pint of Guinness there. Let it stand a while. As soon as I walk in they know exactly what I'm drinking." He says he can make a pint last a long time.

He says he's had a good 68 years - unencumbered by baggage, he's had less to worry about, less to lose than so many people. "Whether it's their kids, wife or husband, their health, their work ... I've had no one round me to bug me, and I'm sort of thankful."

Last week he was on the BBC news, and a few days later he was stopped in the street. "This man said, 'Eh, aren't you the bloke who doesn't exist?' and he asked for my autograph. Well, I couldn't give it him because I can't write. But we had a chat. I said, 'Yes, well I don't exist at the moment, do I?'" He stops. "It's like I'm in this pit. You fall down a hole and never get out of it. That's what I am. I'm in a pit. I fell down a hole and I can't get out."

But, he says, there have been so many people at the centre who have been good to him, who have put in calls for him, and, touch wood, it's been a good life so far. He's off back to the centre before setting off on the buses. "Been nice to meet you," he says. "Be lucky."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1206463,00.html

 

[SniperK2]

I didn't have the same trouble, but as I've never owned a home, paid utility bills, have no passport, my birth certificate went missing a long time ago and no other form of ID was valid, I found it almost impossible to open a bank account when I was in my mid twenties, my mother had to come and act as a guarantor, or something. To the bank, I didn't have enough evidence to prove I really existed.

 

[Kondoru]

I myself would not be able to travel on a ferry or domestic flight, for I have no photo ID, no passport and my drivince licence is the old style.

 

[OneWingedBird]

This is a bit like those people in India who get declared legally dead, except that he was ever legally born.

 

[Anonymous]

Has nobody tried to trace his family through the Traveller/Romani communities? They don't keep written records, but they place great value on families and family ties and most of them can reel off the names and dates of dozens of uncles, aunts, cousins grandparents etc. If relatives can be found, then they would certainly take him in, and might possibly help to get him an ID.

 

[OneWingedBird]

Couldn't they do something similar to what the police did with the guy that they traced from the DNA on a brick that he threw through a lorry window, he had no criminal record and thus no DNA on file but they looked for a partial match to someone who had form and then traced him from his relationship to them.

Or maybe it would just be too expensive or too much trouble...

 

[mendhak]

He is the real person. We are non-persons, just numbers.

In a way.

 

[Timble2]

This thread set me wondering how many other people have no legal existence and records.

I'd have thought it was impossible to drop through the cracks quite so thoroughly, but he seems to have managed it.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

The real Bigfoot

Here is another interesting story on someone else who nearly slipped through the sytem - although he got a birth certificate it wasn't filled out properly and so he got to pick his own name and that is when things started getting weird:

The white beard



David Yamamoto / The Daily


Audrey Quinn / Contributing writer
2004-05-14


As thousands of students rush past him to class, the old man with the white beard paces quietly between the brick buttresses of Kane Hall. Out of place with his long snowy hair and brown clothing, it seems as if he's disconnected from this world of backpacks, lectures and midterms.

People of all ages and appearances populate the campus, yet somehow he still stands out as different. While crowds pass by him, he stands silently, interacting only through cryptic handwritten signs taped to the brick walls -- his presence constant, yet rarely questioned.

"Bigfoot's my name and love is my game," he riddles when posed the question of his identity.

Apparently, his birth certificate was left incomplete, forcing him to choose a name for himself. The moniker of a doubted, mysterious creature fits him well.

"I am the creation. There is nothing beyond the creation. My intelligence will give you all the facts of life from the start of Mother Earth," he explains slowly in a deep, throaty voice.

He has come here to share information he feels students could not learn any other way.

"It's got to be an outdoor classroom because there's not a room big enough for all the people who need my instruction," he declares when asked why he comes to this spot in Red Square. "The 30,000 students here haven't been properly educated."

Bigfoot's dedication to enlightening the UW population can be attested to by the journey he takes to get here. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he wakes at 3 a.m. at his home in Sequim. He typically arrives on campus around 8 a.m. and stays until 1 p.m.

Sequim, a small town on the Olympic Peninsula, is about a two and a half hour drive from Seattle. Bigfoot always traverses the approximately 70 miles by taking rides from open-minded drivers along the way.

"[For 25 years I have] come to this evil institution. Every discipline here is locked into theories, and all the disciplines don't come to a sum total of all the parts," he proclaims. "There has never been any education; war proves that."

Bigfoot travels to the UW out of disagreement with institutional education.

"Seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake is just another form of ignorance," he elaborates.

"To be here they have to pay tuition because they haven't got their intuition," he says of UW students. "Everyone has been programmed to conform to insanity."

Bigfoot is well-read in current events, citing news stories from Venezuela and Cuba. He sees the calamity of international conflicts as support for his conviction that looking for answers beyond one's self is futile, explaining that no truth can be found through education, material goods or government.

"Democracy hasn't worked and the war proves that," he states.

Bigfoot also cites the Bible as a backup for his beliefs, but he is quick to assert that he does not attend any church.

He does call himself the founder the Universal Friendship Organization, or UFO. When asked how one joins his organization he remains vague.

"In the real world of UFO, it is fact to be known that there is nothing to join, you already exist," Bigfoot explains. He remains imprecise concerning the organization's purpose, stating, "Contrary to existence is identity."

The brown hand-knit sweater he always brings with him to campus is embellished with the letters UFO horizontally; the "F" connects in the middle to spell "fact".

On a chair between the brick buttresses rests Bigfoot's briefcase. Contained within it are only the essentials -- a stack of paper, tape and an umbrella.

Included among the papers in the briefcase is a copy of his small book, available to all who inquire. If anyone questions the validity of his name, they can look at the end of the text.

The book also includes a complex diagram of his beliefs, illustrated in almost scientific notation .

At the age of 80, Bigfoot lives by himself. One can see that the well-worn brown sweater is especially important to him when he explains that it was knit by his late wife Patty. Even though he has no family with him, Bigfoot stresses that he does not truly feel alone.

In his spare time he remains active by gardening, which can be confirmed by the dark soil embedded under his nails.

"A person is only as old as they think they are. Body, mind, spirit: if you don't use it you lose it," he comments.

Bigfoot hopes that his presence can encourage others to listen to the truth he feels is intrinsically within them.

"Everyone was given this truth but it was brainwashed out of them," he explains. One of the main culprits of this brainwashing that he lists is media, which he sees as a sickness.

Rather than looking for truth in material things, he wants people to look within their own consciousness.

"The real world is inside," he says.

Source