A Florida man was shocked to learn he wasn't a U.S. citizen despite living in the country for decades. Jimmy Klass, 66, told WKMG he has been voting and paying taxes for his entire adult life.

He said that he was brought to the United States when he was two-years-old when his family moved to New York from Canada. His mom was a Canadian citizen, but his dad had U.S. citizenship, which he assumed passed onto him when they moved to the United States.

"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," he said. "We moved to Tennessee Avenue in Long Island, to be more specific. And we moved into the house next to my grandparents."

Klass received a Social Security card, obtained a driver's license, and even voted in local and federal elections.

However, in 2020, Klass learned that he wasn't actually a U.S. citizen when the Social Security Administration notified him that he wasn't eligible to receive the benefits he had been paying into his entire adult life because he never proved he was legally a U.S. citizen.

"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 explained. "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."

He contacted U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and showed them all of his documents, but they denied his claim, saying he was not a citizen.

Klass has exhausted his savings trying to prove that he is a citizen and was forced to go back to work to pay his bills.

"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."

Colorado News