When to Apply for Birth Abroad for Passport and SSN?

Hi everyone!

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year!

We are travelling to USA on June 30th this year for 4th of July and just curious as to when to apply for our baby's passport etc?

From this point we have 6 months. I don't have any idea how long the process takes.

Thanks

It'll only take a month or so to get the passport, but get it done as soon as you can.  One less thing to worry about!!!

I don’t think it takes too long, but would do it as early as possible to give yourselves plenty of time.

You’ll need to attend an appointment at the US embassy to register the birth and apply for the US passport, and you also need to get the baby a UK passport (if you haven’t already).

I believe it takes about 3 weeks to get a first UK passport and about 4 weeks for the first US passport... so that’s about 2 months of processing times, plus you might have to wait a while to get an appointment at the embassy.


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Thanks guys.

I'm a bit tight when it comes to money (probably the visa process that made me this way) so I wanted to get it as sensibly late as possible to save wasted time on the passport.

Is there anything I should know or is the US embassy websites self explanatory? What are easy examples of citizenship proof and how stringent are they?

The website is self-explanatory.  I've always used transcripts to prove residency, but you can use old passports as well. 

So if you don't have a copy of your high school or college transcripts, I'd start by getting those sent. 

I notice the passport application is an online process.

Will the passport be picked up at the embassy or is it a separate entity and will be mailed?

Mailed

What are easy examples of citizenship proof and how stringent are they?

They're pretty chilled. For example, on the form where they ask for all the dates of where you lived in the USA, I didn't go back to my birth in 1969 and list precise dates; I just put 1969 - 1972 Austin, Texas, 1972 - 1975 Alexandria, Virginia, etc. When it got to later dates that I could take a reasonable guess at, I added the month. Nobody asked for any proof of any of that.

Then there were the mistakes we made.

For our first child, I forgot to bring our marriage certificate. The person who handled our application did a brief interview with my wife and I, asking questions about our marriage ceremony (Where was it? Did anything unexpected/funny happen? etc) and said she was satisfied we were actually married, so the baby's passport application could go ahead.

For the second child, my wife didn't bring any form of ID they could verify her signature with. (We're normally much more organized than this post would suggest.) The person handling our application said they'd look up the application from baby number 1 to compare signatures, and let us know if there was a problem. We never heard about any issues, and the baby 2's passport and other paperwork arrived a few weeks later.

So while I wouldn't suggest skipping anything important, it's not like the UK immigration process where they're looking for a reason to deny you.

Will the passport be picked up at the embassy or is it a separate entity and will be mailed?

The last time we did it (2015) you paid for a courier service as part of the application process at the embassy, and then they courier it to you a few weeks later. I don't know if this is still the case or not.

I agree with everything stated above. After applying for visas for years, one is obviously slightly petrified of about these sorts of things, but getting the two passports for a kid is surprisingly straightforward, with lovely quick turnaround times. Both my girls made it back to the states within about 8 weeks of being born (one for a funeral, the other for Christmas) with both passports in hand. We paid for expedited service, to be fair, but even my older daughter’s second passports got back to us remarkably quickly with no special service.
Good luck.

Thanks guys.

I'm quite nervous with the online passport application as it's assuming she currently lives in the USA as it asks 'Date of your trip' Date of return' which is obviously indefinitely in the UK as she lives here.

It also asks who to contact in an emergency and doesn't give the option for anyone residing outside the US

I haven't gone through the entire form yet but what happens at the end? Does it give you a form for you to print which you then take to the embassy?

They ask for date of trip, so that if you have travel booked, they can ensure you have the passport in time.    Nothing more complicated than that.

You print it all at the end and take it with you. 

I see - thank you!

Can't get an appointment for the next two years haha. The appointment site has absolutely nothing and you try calling and obviously you can't get through to anyone human.

Frustrating

Looks like maybe they’ve only opened up January appointments at the moment which is why all the other months are not available yet.

Seems London is currently fully booked for January, but the Edinburgh Embassy has appointments available on 16, 17, 23 and 24 Jan, but nothing yet for Feb onwards.


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The embassy is moving in less than two weeks, and I believe they are only doing emergency passport applications.  Check again after they move on the 16th!

The embassy is moving in less than two weeks, and I believe they are only doing emergency passport applications.  Check again after they move on the 16th!

The appointment availability is the same for Edinburgh and Belfast too though... appointments are only available (or already booked) in January and the other months are blanked out.


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