Why? As proof of a pre- 3/21/1987 tech.
Someone who was a technician on 3/20/1987 qualifies to be a general today. I'll be doing such a paper upgrade for the first time soon. I did several as a VE in 2010 when the Morse Code requirement was revised to five words per minute for General and Extra. The Technician Plus license was discontinued with access to the Novice/Technician sub-bands (mostly on 10 meters) on the "honors system" since "code credit" was now through documentation maintained solely by the licensee. Advanced license holders could retain their licenses indefinitely, but many took the much easier than today Extra written exam and held off to do the paper upgrades that I did in a year 2000 timeframe. A few thousand VEs presumably did the same. Novice licensees were similar except that there was no advantage to upgrading unless all the way to General with two written examinations.
As an interesting note, since Morse Code is no longer required, we radio Amateurs can all us thise segments of each band without licensing hurdles (except of course, that there are still General and Extra class segments of many of the bands which must be observed and Technician access to HF is limited)
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