Outside Jimmy Klass’s mobile home in Clearwater, you’ll find American flags on all sides. For Jimmy, who’s 67 and a supporter of Donald Trump, America is the only place he’s ever called home.
“I moved to the US in 1959. I’ve been here for 64 years,” he recently told ABC ActionNews.
After spending over fifty years in the U.S., a place where he has lived, worked, studied, married, raised children, paid taxes, and even voted, Klass faced a deeply unsettling revelation in 2020: he discovered that he is not a U.S. citizen. This unexpected news was incredibly challenging for him to process after building his entire life here.
“I was blindsided”
Klass’s background makes a compelling case for his American identity. Born in Canada to a Canadian mother and an American father from New York, Klass moved to the U.S. with his family at the tender age of two and has lived here ever since.
Given these circumstances, it’s only natural that as he grew up, Klass believed himself to be an American and assumed dual citizenship. This belief is rooted in both his familial ties and lifelong residency in the United States, making it reasonable to consider him part of this nation.
“You know you’re old when the old driver’s licenses were paper,” he laughed as displayed his U.S. driver’s licenses from decades past.
Klass openly admitted that no one ever asked him about his citizenship status—not when he applied for his Social Security card, got his Driver’s license, or even when he registered to vote.
“I’ve been voting for over 40 years. I guess I’m in a lot of trouble,” he said with a chuckle.
It’s important to understand that when Klass, as a non-U.S. citizen, participated in American elections by voting, he violated federal law with each instance.
Klass’s citizenship status was never questioned when he was approved to serve as a Marine for the U.S. military, highlighting the trust and confidence placed in him by such a prestigious institution. Furthermore, at another point in his life, he was even cleared to work for the New Jersey State Police, further underscoring his presumed credibility as a U.S. citizen. He never accepted the aforementioned roles, choosing a career as a union worker instead.
“The only thing they asked me for was my social security card and my driver’s license,” he said.
Imagine the frustration of Jimmy Klass, who anticipated receiving a letter from the Social Security Administration in 2020 detailing when he could begin enjoying his well-deserved benefits after years of hard work. Instead, he was shocked to learn that his funds were “frozen,” as reported by News 6 Click Orlando. He was ineligible for Social Security because he wasn’t an American citizen.
And when Klass subsequently took the appropriate steps to attain citizenship, he was denied. In a 2022 denial letter, the U.S. Customs & Immigration Services claimed that Klass failed to provide sufficient evidence showing his father lived in the U.S. for 10 years before Klass was born—a crucial requirement for obtaining citizenship through a parent.
Klass reached out to Senator Marco Rubio’s office and enlisted the expertise of both an immigration attorney and a genealogist. They uncovered records connecting his father to the U.S. during those critical years before his birth. Despite these efforts, his struggle persists even now.
According to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, a child born abroad may acquire U.S. citizenship if at least one parent is an American citizen, the child is under 18 years of age, holds lawful permanent resident status, and resides in the United States under the legal custody of the U.S. citizen parent. Regrettably for Klass, this legislation was not applicable when he relocated to America as a two-year-old.
“I’ve seen a handful of cases like this; they don’t come around every day,” said Indera Demine, a Fort Myers-based immigration attorney, via ABC ActionNews.
She expressed that Klass’ situation likely mirrors the complexities and challenges of the vast and evolving U.S. immigration system, which sometimes struggles to accurately keep track of individuals who are here legally, illegally, or in a more uncertain status. This highlights the human impact within such a complicated framework.
“For many years, the DMV and different agencies didn’t necessarily communicate with each other,” she said via ABC ActionNews, adding that “the documentation that you need to renew your driver’s license or for Social Security benefits were not as stringent as they are now.”
“I’ll probably move back to Canada. Yep, bye-bye, America.”
Still fighting for citizenship, the retiree has been mowing through his savings as a result. In fact, Klass explained that he had no choice but to return to work because of the overwhelming financial pressure.
“I’ve been spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to try to get my money that I paid into Social Security my entire life,” he told the NY Post.
“I even said to them, ‘Well, if you’re not gonna pay me monthly, give me everything that I paid with interest, and we’ll call it a day’ and they go, ‘Oh, we can’t do that, either.’ I said, ‘Well, what can you do?’”
“I worked my 50 years, and I paid into my Social Security. They should be paying me,” he said about the retirement benefits.
Fortunately for Klass, if he’s forced out by the courts he’ll be moving to Canada, an English-speaking country with a similar culture. But, imagine if he’d been born in Mexico, a country with an entirely different culture and language. That’s the situation some undocumented folks will be facing in January when Donald Trump returns to the White House.
So, why was his citizenship never in question?
He fits the image of a typical White American male. And during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, when immigration policies were loose, it was probably easy for him to fly under the radar. This oversight highlights how appearances can lead to assumptions that go unchecked for years.
… And you never know. Because he’s White, the Trump Administration might make an exception. But what about the folks like Klass who aren’t White?
