alexis29

I am a Canadian pr living in Toronto originally from uk and my husband is a canadian. We had our son in march 2012. I want to get my son a british passport, however understand I have to register him as a British citizen first. Does anyone know which application I need to use to do this? I have emailed the uk border agency however received a generic email back from them.
Thank you

MarylandNed

No, you don't. In fact, consular birth registration is not even available for UK citizens born in Canada (and several other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa). If you want your son to have a UK passport, you simply apply for one.

Check here:
https://www.gov.uk/register-a-birth

Which country was the child born in?
Canada

You must register the birth according to the regulations in Canada.

You can’t register the birth with the UK authorities. However, the birth certificate you are given in Canada will be recognised and accepted in the UK, so this isn’t necessary.

alexis29

Thank you very much, I had looked at other threads but got confused with different information.
I appreciate your help
Time to fill out that form then

Atlantic Xpat

Since he'll already have his birth registered in Canada just apply for a British passport providing neccessary details of parents citizenship + Canadian Birth Cert. No registration as a British citizen neccessary, or as MarylandNed points out, possible.

iaink

Just bare in mind that pics of infants can be very hard to get to the necessary standards for contrast etc, so it may be less effort to just get a Cdn passport instead as you can go to the local office and get an instant yes/no on pics and go for a reshoot there and then if necessary, rather than mailing pictures back and forth...

No great advantage to a UK passport for an infant I would say.

MarylandNed

Yeah, you might have read debates about whether UKC's born in the US (or other countries) should have their births registered with the UK authorities. That's usually a hot topic. Not something anyone born in Canada need concern themselves with though since it's not even an option.

alexis29

Thanks everyone. Didn't think about the photos maybe wait to get them done next time we go home to make sure they are right.
Thanks again!

Dashie

We've got British passports for both of our children very easily with photos from Shoppers. Most stores have a book with the specifications for UK passports in, otherwise just take them the sheet you can print out with the form.

As Iaink says, I'm not wholly sure of the technical benefits. For us, it was something that we just wanted to get done and dusted for them.

MarylandNed

I have friends who said that when they got UK passports for their 2 young kids. The UK passports were never used, eventually expired and never renewed. But at least the kids are "in the system", eh?

iaink

In our case it wasnt the technical spec, size/ background etc that was the problem, it was that our kids were blonde/pasty and the pictures were too washed out to meet the internal requirements of the new more secure passports.

It took 3 or 4 goes to get pics the canadian office would accept, and even then the office massaged the images taken by the photographers in the basement of the Scarborough CIC office building in order to beef up the contrast.

The lady at the counter said it was surprisingly common in the case of very small kids...

Dashie

When we had the first ones done for our oldest, they did mention that the photos would get rejected sometimes, and they would retake for free (not much help after those UK courier fees...). However, they also had some tricks to use to get a better tone, because yes too much white or glare in the face would cause them to be rejected. We used a face powder on my sons just to take the shine off their skin, which reduced the glare, and also dressed them in dark clothing to help with the washed out look. Actually, the first time, the people in the store opened a pack of dark bibs so we could put one of those on him and then kept them behind the counter for future.

We've had 5 kids' passports in total now with their photos, no issues with any of them.