Changes to the Report of Birth Abroad process

Hiya,

I thought I'd post this to let everyone know that they seem to have changed the process for reporting births abroad.  I'd booked an appointment for early January and received a phone call telling me they needed to re-book my appointment due to changes in how they process the reports.

Apparently now all reports are being done in Washington and not at the embassy.  The guy I spoke to expected this to increase the time scale for getting passports and reports of births back from the 1 week it generally is now.  Overall this probably won't change anything, but if you are banking on getting the passport quickly, it may not happen. 

Pengi

When we did ours the passport was printed in the US and delievered by courier to us so I don't think that has changed... However, we were given the Consular Report of Birth Abroad Certificate at our appointment so it sounds like that this is the only part of it that has changed...hopefully it won't delay things too much for those that need to do this soon and it should be factored in for those planning on travelling in the next few months to do their appointments sooner rather than later to build in a buffer period.

Official word from the US Embassy in London that this change will only effect the Consular Report. So it looks like passports shouldn't be delayed and still should be arriving back to you in about a week to 10 days:

http://london.usembassy.gov/cons_new/acs/passports/robirth4.html

Alterations to CRBA Services

Embassy London , Consulate Edinburgh and Consulate General Belfast will not accept appointments for CRBA services between January 3rd and 18th.  The Embassy and Consulates are upgrading the printing of the document, and our services will be off line during this time.

No nothing that we have to do has changed (except obviously can't make appointments for that timeframe), just changing how we get the CRBA back?  Not an issue for us yet but I know someone else I need to convince to register her daughters so I want to make sure I give her correct info.