Florida man Jimmy Klass, 66, working to prove his US citizenship
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A man who has lived in the U.S. for more than 60 years, paying taxes and voting, has learned that he is not a citizen and cannot receive his Social Security payments.
Jimmy Klass, 66, of Clearwater, had a mother who was Canadian and a father who was American. He was brought to the U.S. when he was just two years old, reports say.
"My dad’s roots were in Brooklyn, New York ... And two years into my existence, they decided to load up the truck and move to Beverly, so to speak" Klass told WKMG-TV. "We moved to Tennessee Avenue in Long Island, to be more specific. And we moved into the house next to my grandparents."
Klass said he acted like a "regular citizen," after receiving a Social Security card, a driver's license and voter registration card. He even told the TV station he was accepted into the Marine Corps as a police officer, but chose a different path due to being newly married with a child on the way.
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Jimmy Klass has lived in the U.S. nearly his entire life, paying into Social Security, which he now can't get retirement payments from. ( Jimmy Klass/GoFundMe)
"Never, ever, ever came about where I was here illegally, even though Social Security says I didn’t prove it to them," Klass said. "They gave me my Medicare for over a year and a half."
Instead of retiring years ago as he should have, he told WKMG he's spending what money he has to try to get the money he paid into Social Security ever since he started working.
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Jimmy Klass said he received Medicare for over a year and a half. (iStock)
"They sent me a letter that said, ‘Oh, you’re eligible,’ you know? Yada-yada-yada. You’ll get your first check the second Wednesday of January 2020," Klass told the Orlando media outlet. "But instead, I got a notification that it was frozen because I hadn’t proven to them that I was here legally. That was their determination."
Klass said he reached out to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who still denied his citizenship after he provided them with documents. An agency official told Fox News Digital via email "due to privacy considerations, USCIS does not comment on individual immigration cases."
A file photo of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services field main office entrance in Virginia with a sign. (iStock)
Klass said he has been forced to go back to work, and has even set up a GoFundMe to cover the cost of "attorneys and genealogist and retrieving documents for USCIS."
The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 states a child born outside the U.S. "automatically becomes a U.S. citizen" when the person is a child of a parent who is a U.S. citizen, under 18 years of age, the child is a lawful permanent resident and the child is resident in the U.S. in the legal and physical custody of the U.S. citizen parent.
