Reporting a Birth Abroad & Child's First Passport

I posted my experience with this in the Parenting section, but thought it would be useful to have the information here as well.

On Tuesday, May 25 I went to the embassy with my husband and son to Philips birth, get his social security number applied for, and also apply for his US passport. First we had to make an appointment via the following link: http://210.177.22.41/LondonPassport/ - You can only make appointments via the internet. Appointments are sometimes months away, so it is best to do this ASAP, especially if you have travel plans like we did. Everyone I asked at the embassy confirmed that it's technically illegal for him to fly to the US using anything but his US passport, since he's eligible for one. Since my original appointment wasn’t until August, but I emailed them (using the “reply” feature when they emailed me my appointment confirmation) and they were happy to work with me to get me an earlier visit.

The woman in line ahead of us showed up with her son to register his birth as well, but she hadn’t made an appointment. The officer letting us in through security sent her back home, quite adamant that she had to make an appointment first. She was really upset by it, as she had traveled a long way, but he sent her home anyway.

Right before we headed to the embassy we went to get his passport photos taken from this place: www.passportphotos.co.uk – they were really helpful, and they are just around the corner from the embassy really.

Our appointment was for 2:30, and we got in line around 2:00. The line was fairly short but grew longer – still, it didn’t take long for the whole line to get inside.

For the interview, this is what we brought with us:

1. Form DS-11 (The application for a US passport. Pages 1 & 2 get ignored since they are appropriate only for those filing from the US). The embassy's website has instructions on how to file it from the UK.
2. Form DS-2029 (The application to register his birth. Page 2 is his application for a social security number).
3. Needed documentation: Philips LONG birth certificate (they won't accept the short ones), our passports, our marriage certificate, our appointment confirmation sheet, and David's divorce papers)

All the forms are on the embassy’s website, (http://www.usembassy.org.uk/cons_web/acs/passports/robirth4.htm) and are fairly easy to fill out. If you have questions though, it’s a struggle to find help. They won’t accept phone calls or emails. What I did was just leave several parts blank (the parts I had questions about) and the lady at the reception desk was more than happy to help me finish filling it out.

We were at the embassy, all told, for about 2.5 hours. There are baby changing facilities there, which was nice. We handed in our information, waited, paid the fee (my credit card, they don’t accept checks), waited, confirmed our information, waited, paid for the visa delivery service (they instruct you on this at the time, and it is a £10 fee), waited, then walked away with his certificate.

You can only register your children if they are under 16 or under 18, I'm not sure which, and the procedure (I believe) is slightly different for older children, though there were some 5-6 year olds there getting their passports as well.

Then we received his passport on Tuesday June 8, exactly 2 weeks after our appointment.

*cheer* Thanks for the info

We got his Social Security Card in the mail today, June 12 - 2.5 weeks after filing for it.

thanks for posting your experience, am going to bookmark as i'm sure we're going to need the info soon enough!!:)

Superb post!  Is it ok if I make a copy if this one scrolls off because of its time allotment?  Mine's in her 7th month. 

Hi, I watched this thread in the parenting area but thought my question fit better here, too: What exactly are we doing, in the long term, when we register a child's birth?

Our baby's due in a matter of weeks, and we were hoping to take it home for a visit later in the year. Leaving the question of appointment times aside, we're concerned just exactly what reporting his/her birth means - if we get him a SSN and a passport by registering the birth, is he automatically a citizen? And therefore subject to filing income tax, presumably the draft, and whatever the government comes up with in the uncertain future? I can't find anything to answer this on the embassy website, and as you know they don't take phone calls...

I had always imagined the child would be able to choose whether to take up its right to US citizenship once it came of age. Is this really something we have to choose now? My British husband isn't enamoured of the idea, and I'm not yet convinced it's something I want to do either (sorry if that offends anyone.)

But what happens if I don't register the child? I understand there's a penalty for me for travelling into the US on my UK passport, and there's a penalty for travelling with my child on my UK passport. So I could conceivably leave my husband to travel with the child, and I could enter/exit as if I'm on my own, on the US passport. That seems a good enough plan, but I don't like not being prepared for eventualities/emergencies - not to mention how dodgy it would look if they discovered we were travelling separately. Has anyone wrestled with the same questions? 

I can't answer your moral dilemma, but I'm pretty certain that registering your child will NOT make them liable for income tax. You have to maintain some sort of residence in the US to do that. Not to mention be earning!    As for the draft, I believe that as long as your child did not enter the US when one was going on, he would be OK but I think others may know a bit more about this. I think Peedal may know a bit about this.

It would appear you will be penalized if your child travels on a UK passport and I would think traveling separately would be a rather large hassle, espcialy, as you said, the INS found out.

As far as I can tell, registering has no short term implications and long term implications would occur when your child was old enough to make his own decisions - assuming the US govt doesn't lower the selective service age or do something extremely radical to income tax laws, etc.

This is just IMHO, but I would certainly be registering. Hope you can make a decision you're both happy with!

If your child is entitled to a US passport, he/she has to enter the US on one.  And considering the state of Immigration Officer's minds today, I wouldn't take the chance of not obtaining one for him and hoping no one notices on trips in and out of the US over the next however many years.

As for Selective Service (there is no draft *as of yet*) - it applies to males between the ages of 18 - 26.  My sons are now 10 and 16, and as long as they never actually move back and reside in the US before they are 26, they won't have to register.  After late next year (2005) they'll be dual citizens as well.  They'll be able to visit, but they won't actually be able to live there without registering.

I should think that it's best to register the child now - as they don't ever have to actively *use* their US citizenship except by way of using the passport to visit the US, if they decide to live in the UK (or elsewhere) their whole lives.  However, the state of the world is not constant, and your child may not always have the option of "electing" for US citizenship in the future if law change at any point.  In my opinion, it's best they start off with it as it does no harm in having it.

That's an interesting point about getting the citizenship while the getting is "good"... But I'm not clear on whether registering the birth is the same as getting the citizenship. Is that the consensus?

Registering your child is claiming their citizenship. You *must* register your child before you get them a passport, and you *must* get them a US passport if they are ever going to fly into the US because it is now illegal for a child *eligible* for US citizenship to enter the US on anything but a US passport. If the child has a right to citizenship, which he/she does, they make it so that you have to claim his/her citizenship otherwise traveling to the US is technically illegal, unless you want to renounce his/her citizenship. This is what they told me anyway, and the law is stated on the website about being illegal to travel to the US on a British passport if eligible for a US one. Pain in the butt, I know, but important to do. You child won't have to pay tax or anything. Your child will be BOTH a US and UK citizen and can choose which country he/she wants to live in, work in etc - it's basically giving them a free ticket to wherever by giving them their citizenship.