applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

hi! i have another question...

i'm filling out the passport application for my son (i'm his mom)

i am a british citizen (born in the uk) my son was born in the US & i haven't registered his birth with any British Consulate yet...

so when i get to these two questions below i have to answer no:

was the child born in a foreign country & the birth registered at a British Consulate?

was the child registered as a British citizen, British Dependent/Overseas Territories citizen, British Overseas citizen, British subject or British protected person?

can i still apply for his UK passport or do i need to register his birth with a British Consulate first...

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Answer "NO" to those questions and continue. You do NOT need to register your son's birth with the UK authorities in order for him to obtain a UK passport.

3 of my 4 kids were born outside the UK. None of the births were registered with the UK authorities. Actually 2 of them were born in Canada. UK consular birth registration isn't even an option for UKC's born in Canada and some other countries (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa).

Read this (bolding by me):

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-...tering-a-birth

"If your child is born outside the UK and is British, you can register the birth with the nearest consulate or with our consular department in London if you’ve returned to the UK. You don’t have to do this, but if you do your child will have a British style document and details of the birth will be held at the General Register Office in the UK. This is called Consular birth registration

The document we produce is not a UK birth certificate and should not be used as one. It does not take the place of the locally issued birth certificate.

Consular birth registrations also do not confer British nationality and are not required to register your child as a British citizen or needed before you can apply for a British passport. The reason is that British nationality is passed from parent to child and your child must have an automatic claim to British nationality at birth in order to make a registration."

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

thank you soooooooo much :)

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

We registered our kids, (no need to buy the certificate you can buy that later in UK for a lot less money)
Reason being, local birth certificates issued after baby is 3 months old can't be used for British passports, (some have sneaked under the radar) If you lose the local BC, like I did, and your kids are grown, you are dead they lose their UK passport and need another. It's a big piece of information that they can use to get that passport seeing they can't use the newly issued local BC this registration can be looked up for them in UK if they lose that too. What kid remembers all their parents info, I'm not even sure where my mother and father were born exactly, only the area of UK.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

I used a US birth cert issued 5 years after my daughter's birth to obtain a UK passport for her.

The UK authorities are suspicious of US birth certs issued more than 3 months after birth because US birth records are amended in the case of adoptions (and so the parents named on a US birth cert may not be the biological parents). If you present such a birth cert, you MIGHT be asked additional questions to make sure that there hasn't been an adoption. It does NOT mean that the birth cert is automatically unacceptable.

In my case no questions were asked. US birth records are handled by each state and so formats and standards vary. My daughter's Maryland birth cert contains a "record changed date" and an "issue date". Although the "issue date" was 5 years after her birth, the "record changed date" was one day after her birth. It could be that the "record changed date" is the important date on the Maryland birth cert and the one that would be changed in the case of an adoption - but I don't know that for sure.

However, I agree that consular birth registration and obtaining a consular birth cert (or one through the GRO in the UK later) would certainly make this issue go away. Note that you can only get one through the GRO from the September following the year of consular birth registration. So if you register any time in 2012, you won't be able to get a GRO birth cert until September 2013.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Does depend on the state...some aren't a problem if they have the date of when the first birth cert was registered that is separate to the date of certificate issue....but not all states do that, some only have the date of issue on the cert and it is those that people might have issues with.

Anyway, plenty of threads going over the pros and cons of registering the birth, so easy enough to find out the info, but I think it's worth doing, MaN, above doesn't.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

That's subjective. It really depends on the situation and the people involved. I don't see the need for it for my daughter but other people may be in a situation where it makes sense for them. I have multiple US (Maryland) birth certs for my daughter stored in different locations. She can get more if she ever needs to and has already used one issued more than 3 months (i.e. 5 years) after her birth to obtain a UK passport. So who cares if she ever needs a replacement and has to use one issued 20+ years after her birth? So I really don't see the point in consular birth registration for her.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Like I said, it depends on the state. It works for you, so you didn't bother, but that's not the case of all the other 49 states.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

All of the other 49 states? How do you know that?

I just looked at someone's Virginia birth cert. It has "Date Record Filed" and a separate "Issue Date".

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Part of the reason for not accepting BC's issued more than 3 months after birth is because of adoptions.
My Dd (adopted) has an amended Birth certificate, her shows a registration date of 6 days after her birth, it shows Dh and I as the birth parents and an issue date of when she was 2 years old.
So if they accept BC's based on registration date Dd's BC shows her's at 6 days old. I could have chanced and sent it off and got her a UK Passport, but she wasn't a UK citizen by decent, and needed to get UK citizenship first.
So in essence any child born abroad with a newly issued BC showing an issue date more than 3 months after birth could be adopted like my Dd. Where really they just lost the original and got a new issued one.
Registering the birth means they have proof they had citizenship by descent from birth. Even without the certificate they can bee looked up in the UK.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Very interesting. I was really hoping that someone with experience of this would actually come along and describe exactly what a US birth cert looks like after an adoption (e.g. what the various dates look like).

I'm now really baffled as to why my daughter's US birth cert (issued 5 years after birth) didn't raise any questions. The answer may have something to do with different states having different procedures/standards - but I certainly don't know that for sure and quite frankly I actually doubt that. It may have just got "under the radar" as you put it. If that's true, I'll have to think about consular birth registration for my daughter.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

:banghead:

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Is the child going to be living in the USA and merely visiting the UK?

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Yes, that's exactly what the rest of us have been talking about.

Not every state issues a birth cert the same way, with the same info that you got on yours from Maryland :rolleyes:

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

I understand that. However, this is the FIRST time I've seen someone with experience of an adoption actually report exactly what happens to a "Date Record Filed" on a US birth cert after an adoption. I was thinking that maybe that or similar fields (e.g. "Date Record Changed") would be updated after an adoption. That's not what the previous poster reported with the "Date Record Filed". Of course, as you say, different states could be doing different things.

I still don't think that consular birth registration is absolutely necessary but I'll admit that I'm definitely leaning more towards recommending consular birth registration than I ever was before. If you're not going to do it, I think you had better obtain multiple copies of US birth certs within the first 3 months of birth, store them in different locations, and also obtain a UK passport for your child (you don't necessarily have to keep it current but get that first one at least). However, consular birth registration is certainly something to consider for people who do not feel like they have enough other documentation of their child's UK citizenship or who just don't feel comfortable with their child having to deal with this issue in the future.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Let's have a situation where the child is a dual citizen living in the US with their parents, occasionally visiting the UK to see family. This is a common scenario. If you want to spend the minimum yet secure your child's documentation for UK citizenship, the best way is simply just to register the birth. This never expires and the registration is held securely. The child must have a US passport for travel out of and into the US anyway, so there's little point in them holding a UK passport as well.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

I don't think you can ever assume that anything is held "securely". I've been involved in IT and disaster recovery for 26 years I have seen "secure" data disappear through hardware failure, software failure, human error, malice, hackers, etc. I could argue that UK passport records are held as "securely" as consular birth registration records but it doesn't mean anything.

I would rather have a hardcopy of a UK passport (even if it is expired) or a UK birth cert (consular or GRO) that I can shove into someone's face as I challenge them to explain away my claim to UK citizenship.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

You're comparing the UK losing its vital records with your $299 Costco safe. It's really not worth arguing with you.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

I don't have a Costco safe. I keep my important documents in a safety deposit box at the bank.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

So, which is more secure? The vital records of the United Kingdom, or the shoe boxes in the back room of the Third Bank of Podunk?

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

That is the thing, some states don't do any of that, they just print the date in which the certificate is issued. It is those states where the real problem lies.

Those states do it that way so that a person will not know just by looking at their birth cert that it has been altered, so won't find out accidentally that they might have been adopted.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Why not have both?

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Fine! Do the registration, keep the early copies of the US birth certificate, and get the passport. I'd recommend it to anyone

But if your kid is a dual living in the US and you're only going to do one thing for reasons of economy, register the birth.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

A couple of years back I obtained a (first time) UK passport for my 17 year old son who was US born (I was born in England).
They made me (made him actually) produce my hospital records of his birth in addition to birth certificate. Fortunately the hospital and records were still existing and a copy easily obtained. Reading this thread I now realise that they were thinking adoption (it never occurred to me at the time).

The main reason to obtain a dual citizen teenager a UK passport is that it effectively acts as an EU work permit. The main reason to get the passport now, rather than do it much later is that you do the paperwork while it is relatively fresh and relatively easy to put together. The downside is that it costs more than waiting, and you need to remember to renew the passport periodically, all of which adds to the cost.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

That's why people are suggesting that folks just register the birth, then it's done, one off cost.

No need to renew a passport, which isn't needed, isn't valid for very long and if expired for a period of time will be treated as a first time application, just as if the passport was lost/stolen and sure the passport records should be kept, but that doesn't mean the government will look them up for a new application and that has come up as a issue in the past.

If you can afford to do the passport, that's great, go for it, but as FB said above, if there's just the one thing you should do and can't afford to do anything else, it would be just to register the birth and not even bother with the certificate. Everything else is just gravy and extra expense :)

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

There is another issue though.

We live in an uncertain world that looks to be more unstable in the years ahead than it was in the past. There are legion stories of people who did not see their need to leave Germany in the 1930s because they thought the past was a guide to the future.

Who knows, there could be war or chaos everywhere, for example if sea level rise keeps on being faster than predicted every time they measure it. Having a passport in hand gives options that probably won't be needed but just might, might, be invaluable.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Is there a full moon tonight? Or have they just increased the transmission power from the Utah bunker?

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

:banghead:

For "reasons of economy", obtain the kid's US birth cert asap and a copy of the UKC parent's birth cert. If you're worried about losing them, obtain more than 1 copy of each and store them in different locations. That's the cheaper option and you don't even need to do consular birth registration or obtain a UK passport yet.

If you're going to do consular birth registration, you might as well get the UK birth cert through the GRO. What's the cost of going the extra step to obtain that GRO birth cert? That is all someone would be "saving" if they followed your advice...after they'd already forked out for the consular birth registration.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

You're maintaining two bank deposit boxes for a lifetime and you believe that it's cheaper than having the GRO store it? Not to mention the fact that it fails the test of security.

This is insane. You made a mistake with your own children. You probably thought you were being clever, but I'm afraid you didn't think it through. I cant help you with your problem, but please don't try and persuade others to follow your follow your folly.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Look, we can agree to disagree. I'm entitled to my point of view just as you are entitled to yours. I'm also entitled to express it.

I made no mistakes with my "children." Two were born in Canada where consular birth registration isn't even an option (which is also true of other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa). One was born in the UK (so no issue there either). ONE child was born in the US. I have enough birth certs for her, me and my wife stored in separate locations. She already has a UK passport. I see no need for consular birth registration - if I did I could still do it, so again, there is no "mistake". The UK government actually states on their web site that you don't need to do it:

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-...tering-a-birth

I can see that some people might feel the need to do it for whatever reason (e.g. the US birth cert issued more than 3 months after birth). I just don't see those reasons applying to my daughter's situation.

I certainly don't have safety deposit boxes just for storing birth certs although that's a perfectly good reason for having one. I happen to already have a safety deposit box for other reasons so it costs me no more to throw a couple of birth certs in there for safekeeping. I have family members who also have safety deposit boxes so it costs nothing to throw a couple more birth certs in there too.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket by trusting the GRO. As I've said before, I've seen "secure" records go missing for various reasons. Nothing quite beats the ability to shove a physical document into someone's face and have them try to explain it away.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Method one: single payment required, no other actions necessary, stored permanently, child may request copy at any time.

Method two: multiple payments required over extended periods of time to secure, multiple actions necessary over lifetime of child to secure -- including, presumably, the time when you have passed away, loss is irretrievable.

You can certainly do both methods -- I have no problem with that. But if you're only going to do one method, FFS do the first one!

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

:popcorn:

Ian

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

What multiple payments and actions are involved in obtaining a birth cert and storing it?

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Payment for a storage box, or indeed multiple storage boxes in your quoted example. And for the lifetime of the child, 78.2 years if they're an American. Okay, you already have one! Make sure you leave money in your will for your child to rent them as well. And train them on well-keeping since it's irreplaceable! Every time you move countries/cities, you need to change boxes. Every time you need the certificate for something, you risk losing an irreplaceable copy.

Compare and contrast with registering the birth: a single payment, certificate always easily replaceable at nominal cost, no action necessary at any time to preserve the record.

Just go and register your youngest child and get it over with. You made a bad mistake. Now you're doing a Romney by compounding it.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

The thing about these various approaches is that they all make sense if we lived in certain times where the past was a good guide to the future.

If I read the post correctly, I was mocked for asserting that we live in uncertain times wherein predicting the future very far out is risky. Even in the face of the fact that citizenship, residence and work permit rules have changed in major ways several times during my lifetime and there are people advocating still further changes goiong forward.

The thing about passports is - when the need for a passport asserts itself is it just as often urgent as not. The best time to apply for a passport is before you see a need for it, not when you actually do need it.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Agreed

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

I think you probably lost the plot a long way back. Let me explain:-

The UK government provides two methods for documenting the UK citizenship of your US-born child: registration of birth and passport. (There is a third method described in this thread which ignores these methods and suggests you can do it by preserving irreplaceable documents yourself for the lifetime of the child. Obviously this is so stupid that it needn't be in the list.)

The best plan is obviously to use both. However, some families are strapped for cash and will only get the option of one should they wish to put food on the table that week. In this case, which one should you use?.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

This is not an "either or" situation. The point you seem to be completely missing is this...people routinely have copies of their real birth certs anyway REGARDLESS of whether they also do consular birth registration. You can't be seriously suggesting that doing consular birth registration negates the need to have and look after a physical US birth cert. At least I sincerely hope that's not what you're suggesting.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

There are two ways of documenting UK citizenship for a child born in the USA: consular registration of birth and passport. If you're only going to do one of these, do the consular registration.

It really is that simple unless you suffer from cognitive dissonance.

Re: applying for kids UK passport ~ not registered yet
 

Maybe you need to read and try to understand this because I give up:

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-...tering-a-birth

"If your child is born outside the UK and is British, you can register the birth with the nearest consulate or with our consular department in London if you’ve returned to the UK. You don’t have to do this, but if you do your child will have a British style document and details of the birth will be held at the General Register Office in the UK. This is called Consular birth registration

The document we produce is not a UK birth certificate and should not be used as one. It does not take the place of the locally issued birth certificate.

Consular birth registrations also do not confer British nationality and are not required to register your child as a British citizen or needed before you can apply for a British passport. The reason is that British nationality is passed from parent to child and your child must have an automatic claim to British nationality at birth in order to make a registration."

"However there is no requirement for a consular birth registration to be done for any birth that has occurred overseas. The original birth certificate issued by the authorities in the country in which the birth took place, along with a certified translation into English, if appropriate, is sufficient for all purposes in the UK (including passport applications)."