savannah_boy

Hi everyone I am jumping on this thread and used the search. Hope that's not a problem. If you find the answer to my question in another thread please post that too

I am a UKC with PR and my wife USC and we live in the USA. We are having a baby in April. After her birth we will be applying for both US & UK passports for her because we will visit my family in the UK at the end of this year. It is our intent in several years to move back there.

Prior to applying for a British passport, what are the pros and cons for a British Consular birth certificate? I read that ppl say it is easier to get a British Passport with this. Is it difficult without? The website
http://ukinusa.fco.gov.uk/en/help-fo...-registration/ seems to give an indifferent answer about it. Obviously there is a financial cost.

Thanks in advance.

Jerseygirl

Rather than hijack a thread I have moved your post into one of it's home. You will also see I've moved it into the US forum as it is not a US Immigration question.

sir_eccles

The only trick to realize with the birth certificates is that one issued I think more than three months after birth can cause issues. This is because when a child is adopted the US authorities essentially destroy the original birth record. So, when applying for a passport at the consulate they may be suspicious of a birth certificate issued some time later. So it is often considered a good idea to get the US birth certificate as soon as you can and then register the birth at the consulate. You don't have to get the UK certificate as that can be pricey but you would have to wait until the September of the following year to order it from GRO.

As for passport, the UK one is expensive and they must have a US one to enter and leave the US. They can safely visit the UK on a US passport and wait to get the UK passport at a later date.

savannah_boy

We will get A US birth certificate straight after the birth. So how is a Consular Birth registration useful? The site recommends it if both parents are UKC but only I am. As for the British passport, well it was just a patriotic thing I wanted to have for her when she enters Britain with us although we won't be moving there in the immediate future.

sir_eccles

It's useful because it creates a British birth record held by British authorities which is fairly strong evidence of British citizenship. While it is easy to say now that you are British and therefore your child is, how easy will it be for the child to prove that in 5, 10, 20 years down the line without the registration? Peace of mind for a small price.

Mr Weeze

It isn't difficult to get a British passport without it - the only thing you might need to do is send off for your full birth certificate from the National Records Office - you may need it in order for your child to get a passport.

When we got our US-born child a GB passport, we had to send off our marriage certificate along with the full UK birth certificates for me and my wife (both Brits) and a US birth certificate for our US born child. I honestly don't know what differences there will be for you as your spouse is USC and I don't know if the bit about marriage will matter, or what sort of record you have if you weren't married in the UK.

savannah_boy

We were married in the UK and have original birth and marriage certificates for both of us in hand.

Mr Weeze

It needs to be a longer version of the UK birth certificate - depends what you have.

http://www.vitalcertificates.co.uk/w...icate-51-p.asp

You may already have the long one, I don't know. If not, go here:

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

The version of the birth certificate I had was a short one - I just assumed it was OK, but I got an e-mail from the consulate here asking for the long one (for me and my wife). So I had to do an online chat thing with them to extend the application window (they gave me 14 days initially, it was extended to 90) and then order up the certificates on an expedited mailing service.

It was easy to do, just moderately annoying.

Bob

I wouldn't bother with a Brit passport if you're only going for holidays, and pick one up in the UK when you're on holiday, it's a lot cheaper that way.

As for birth certs, so many threads on pro/cons, it comes up in pretty much every baby passport thread and possibly in the wiki?

Either way, worth getting the consular registration as it's future proof, unlike just a passport on it's own and means you don't have to have a endless supply of proof of UK citizenship eligibility with you at all times, which can be hard to get in the future for the kid if you're dead. At the moment, you can get parents marriage certificates etc, but what in the future if you can't for privacy law reasons? It has happened in Australia and some other countries.

Also, depends on how your state deals with issuing birth certs, some states get questioned more than others because of the issue of adoption and changing the info, so it depends if they state the date of original issue separately from date of current issue etc.

Wouldn't bother get the actual certificate though, wait till following Sept and get it in the UK from the GRO for a tenner.

MarylandNed

Agree.

How does consular birth registration exempt someone from having to supply their parents' marriage certificate? Even people born in the UK have to supply it (depending on when they were born; and assuming their parents were actually married of course).

Australia doesn't require parental marriage certificates for Australian passport applications so it's easy for access to them to be restricted. The UK does require them - so how can the UK deny access to them if they are also required for passport applications? Either access would have to be allowed or parental marriage certificates would have to be removed from the list of documents required for a passport application (some people can't supply them anyway for other reasons e.g. parents were never married!)

It's not the following September - they are available from the September following the year of registration. So anyone registered at any time in 2013 would have to wait until September 2014.