The Unregistered

Regardless of class, both the employed and those on Basic are considered full citizens of the United Nations, their births and the details of their lives registered in countless government databases. Unofficially, however, there’s also a third group of people on Earth living on the margins of society: the unregistered. Whether the products of unlicensed birth or criminals who have erased all public traces of their existence, the unregistered are united by the fact that there are no records of their births or lives in the vast databases of The United Nations. It’s impossible to know exactly how many unregistered people live on Earth, eking out an existence in the cracks of society. Religious radicals and fringe groups are the sources of most unregistered births, followed by the unlicensed children of the prostitution trade. Without even the rudimentary resources of those on Basic, the unregistered frequently live in condemned buildings and run-down squats, and often turn to the black market and crime to support themselves.
An unregistered person can register themselves with the government at any time, though few do so willingly, preferring the freedom that would be denied to them in a life on Basic, even if their unregistered existence is harder. Regional governments occasionally launch security sweeps of Basic housing and low-income or high crime-rate neighborhoods, and any unregistered people caught up in these sweeps are arrested and entered into the system. Those who refuse to provide their names for registration have new names assigned to them. Provided they’re not found guilty of some crime, they are registered on the Basic rolls and monitored by the government for the rest of their lives.