PLEASE HELP- documents for newborn

It seems like everybody on that thread without exception rushed to get their kids a passport for their home country. Why is that?

I think one of the reasons a lot of us go straight to the home country passport route is the security we feel that gives us. For instance in this thread http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=7341.0 about the troubles at the top, reminds us all that an exit strategy is important and that's a lot easier if the kids are on foreign passports.

LD is doing such a good job of answering your questions and you're getting great advice. I will just add that i'm a UK citizen with a 4 year old here and i did not have to make any visits to the embassy pre-birth, and my daughter is not on a Chinese hukou.

I did call the British consulate however to ask about acquiring British nationality for my son, should I choose to do that. They said that it will cost me 1100 yuan for an 'eligibility test' to determine whether my son is eligible for UK citizenship or not. Why the hell wouldn't he be eligible?   Did any of you guys have to do that? Once that check is complete, and assuming he is indeed eligible, it will cost a further 685 yuan to get a 'certificate of nationality' or something like that. Seems like a massive swindle.

That does sound like a swindle. If you are British of British parents then your child is pretty much automatically presumed to be British. If you're British by birth but your parents are not then i think they have to determine eligibility - whatever that means.

I live down south so i dealt with the Hong Kong embassy when registering citizenship and i guess they have so much more experience in dealing with this that it all seemed really straightforward.

 
 

Don't forget to ask for the birth certificate to have English on it. I've heard if you get the purely Chinese one it can be a problem later.

Don't forget to ask for the birth certificate to have English on it. I've heard if you get the purely Chinese one it can be a problem later.

They will most likely just give you whatever they have. For the US Embassy, you need to submit a translation of the certificate (non-notarize, can do it yourself) when applying for your Cert. of birth abroad and passport.

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It seems like everybody on that thread without exception rushed to get their kids a passport for their home country. Why is that?

I think one of the reasons a lot of us go straight to the home country passport route is the security we feel that gives us. For instance in this thread http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=7341.0 about the troubles at the top, reminds us all that an exit strategy is important and that's a lot easier if the kids are on foreign passports.

LD is doing such a good job of answering your questions and you're getting great advice. I will just add that i'm a UK citizen with a 4 year old here and i did not have to make any visits to the embassy pre-birth, and my daughter is not on a Chinese hukou.

Quote

I did call the British consulate however to ask about acquiring British nationality for my son, should I choose to do that. They said that it will cost me 1100 yuan for an 'eligibility test' to determine whether my son is eligible for UK citizenship or not. Why the hell wouldn't he be eligible?   Did any of you guys have to do that? Once that check is complete, and assuming he is indeed eligible, it will cost a further 685 yuan to get a 'certificate of nationality' or something like that. Seems like a massive swindle.

That does sound like a swindle. If you are British of British parents then your child is pretty much automatically presumed to be British. If you're British by birth but your parents are not then i think they have to determine eligibility - whatever that means.

I live down south so i dealt with the Hong Kong embassy when registering citizenship and i guess they have so much more experience in dealing with this that it all seemed really straightforward.

 
 

Thanks for the info.

So you didn't have to visit the HK British consulate to get your son's British passport? How did you do it? I might go down that route.

I did have to go go Hong Kong to get the passport, but I didn't have to go for any reason before the kid was born.