Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
The Bar Room => The Love, Marriage and Family Board (ON-TOPIC) => Topic started by: The Local Dialect on June 22, 2009, 08:53:19 PM
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Those of you who have kids who were born in China, but have passports from your country rather than China, when you took your kids out of the country for the first time, did you get them exit-entry permits or did you have to get them full on Chinese visas? And did you have to go back to where the kid was born to do so? We're getting conflicting information from different sources. Called up the PSB but they seemed confused by what we were asking. Can anyone point us in the right direction? I'd rather not waste an afternoon on a trip to the PSB in person, but it might be the only way to get a straight answer. mmmmmmmmmm
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Children born in China and who have never left China are, for exit/entry purposes, treated as Chinese citizens, even if they have a foreign passport. Therefore, they have to get the same documents as Chinese citizens...passport and exit permit. Once the plane lifts off the ground, the Chinese papers immediately cancel.
If the child ever returns to China, they are treated as foreigners and will need the same documents you do. They'll need the foreign passport and a visa or residence permit; generally small children get visas/permits as sort of attachments to one of the parents' papers.
Remember: China does not allow dual citizenship. Once they get a foreign passport and leave the country, any identity as a Chinese citizen immediately ends...at least in theory.
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Gotcha. Although I've been told that for the baby they'll issue just an entry exit permit rather than an actual Chinese passport (since he doesn't have an ID, hukou, etc. to apply for a passport with? And he has an American passport already?), that is good for one use, and then when he enters again he'll have to get a visa, like you said. We don't really need Chinese citizenship for him, and he already has his US passport anyhow.
But this PSB woman told us over the phone that we have to go to Kunming and get him a tourist visa before we can take him anywhere, which pretty much contradicts everything we've heard so far. I will probably take him down to the local PSB and see if I can't get the entry/exit permit without going back to Kunming. They did my visa here afterall.
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We did not have a Chinese passport, but we did have to have exit papers applicable.
We had an spanking new Oz citizenship and Australian passport for her, but these are not used until you LAND.
On return to China Little Miss N has to have visas etc like me, same price, only really easy to get.
NOTE THIS REALLY WELL: One really BIG issue is that you can't get a visa for your baby until she does leave (or so my FAO told us), therefore need to take all the paperwork for a visa to the foriegn country. Ensure, if you can, the paperwork for 'visiting family' and NOT a tourist visa.
If you only get a tourist visa, intending to fix it up when you get back to China, you are normally required to have a return air ticket for your child.
I didn't, thinking I could get a proper visa once here, as had been assured by my FAO. This was not accepted by the Australian emmigration. They wanted her to stay, or have a return ticket.
I did some really fast talking, and it worked, but it was touch and go.
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Very helpful info both, thanks! If we go, I'll be sure to bring the birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc. with us so Little TLD can get the visiting family visa (on a related note, I just found out yesterday that my parents got one year multi entry L visas for visiting family -- us -- on the strength of a letter from their son in law, my husband, despite all the October madness this year. Nice, huh?).
Two quick questions. Did you get the exit/entry permit in the same city where the young Miss N was born? I was able to get my spouse visa without going to Mr. TLD's hometown, but we have heard that for our son we may have to go back to Kunming. Also, do you remember how long it took to get the exit/entry permit? I'm hoping it is something that can be issued in a matter of a few days, since we're planning on traveling in July, but that may be wishful thinking.
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We are still in the town in which she was born, so I don't know if you can do it elsewhere.
I remember the exit thingy took 6 weeks, but there was some difficulty. I think the birth certificate was in teh passport office or some such. Mrs N isn't here right now, to ask.
I am sure you can see that they must be very very careful about letting kids get transported out of the country.
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you should also PM Decurso about this or lookup his old post on the topic. He's had to deal with last year i believe.
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you should also PM Decurso about this or lookup his old post on the topic. He's had to deal with last year i believe.
Thanks for the heads up! I found the post in question and there was useful information there. My son has a Chinese dad, but no hukou or Chinese passport, as we decided long ago not to go through the whole hukou process (which is pointless anyhow if your kid has a foreign passport since they'd have to renounce the hukou to actually use the foreign passport from what I understand), so it should just be a matter of getting him an entry/exit permit. We are going to go down to the Beijing PSB and investigate this week and see if we can't get it done here instead of trekking back to Kunming for it.
Anyone know what the Chinese for the entry/exit thingy is? Is it a 通行证, like the same terminology as what you'd have to get to enter T'b't?
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My wife says (for our daughter based upon the psb in her hometown), the document our baby needs is the same little book that looks almost exactly like a passport, which my wife uses when going across the border over to HK and back.
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Yeah, as I think back on it, my case was a little different.
My ever-charming wife went out, without my knowledge or consent, and got our daughter a Chinese hukou...illegally, since she already had a US passport at the time. Therefore, she had to have more documents in order to leave.
If you married a relatively sane Chinese person, the exit permit should be enough.
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That's IF, Raoul
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If you married a relatively sane Chinese person, the exit permit should be enough.
ahahahahah Although they're a rare breed, I think my husband qualifies as a mostly sane Chinese person. He sees absolutely no point in going through the hassle of getting our son a hukou for a village in Yunnan with a population of about 5000.
This is something that anyone out there considering having kids in China with a Chinese spouse should keep in mind though -- make sure your spouse understands why NOT to get a Chinese hukou. I think some of them do it because they think they have to or do not realize that having a Chinese hukou does the kid no good if he/she has another passport.
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I think some Chinese parents want it for the kids, even with a Western passport in hand, because in many places kids with local hukou can qualify for some social benefits- cheap admission to preschools and so on. But it can bite you on the butt when it comes time to depart China...
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I think some Chinese parents want it for the kids, even with a Western passport in hand, because in many places kids with local hukou can qualify for some social benefits- cheap admission to preschools and so on. But it can bite you on the butt when it comes time to depart China...
Yeah, I can actually imagine that a "good" hukou, like for Beijing or Shanghai or some nice city might be worth the hassle if you were going to raise the child in China, at least through primary school. The difference in school fees for locals and outsiders can be pretty significant, especially for the better schools.
Anyhow, we went down to the Beijing PSB today and they told us that we do indeed have to go back to Kunming to get his entry/exit permit. So I dunno, we're still thinking about whether we want to do this right now or not, since, while we were originally planning on moving back to Kunming, plans have changed and we were just planning a trip to Thailand for the summer. Not sure if the hassle is worth it for a family vacation at this point.
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My wife was told that after our daughter crosses the border, she may only come back with a Visa issued from her home country, no where else. Not sure how accurate that truly is though.
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It truly is quite accurate:
If the child ever returns to China, they are treated as foreigners and will need the same documents you do. They'll need the foreign passport and a visa or residence permit; generally small children get visas/permits as sort of attachments to one of the parents' papers.
Remember: China does not allow dual citizenship. Once they get a foreign passport and leave the country, any identity as a Chinese citizen immediately ends...at least in theory.
Only exception would be if you didn't give your child a Western passport, and retained full Chinese citizenship for your child. And only a real fiend would do that... bibibibibi
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That's good to know Brandex, it would suck to only find out that fine point too late after we're out of the country.
Raoul are you saying that you can confirm what Brandex said, that the visa for the child can only be gotten in my home country, not in any other place? For example, I have a friend whose school got her daughter a entry/exit permit when she was first born, but it expires in August. Since she's moving away from the city where her daughter is born soon, she's thinking of bringing her daughter with her when she goes to Hong Kong next month so that she can get her daughter on a visa and not waste the entry/exit permit that her school got.
I'll be sure to ask the PSB in Kunming about it before we go all the way down there. When we went to the Beijing PSB today we told them we wanted to go traveling, not go home to my country, and they didn't mention anything about that being a problem, but that is a really important point to clarify.
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Yes, it's true.
I already explained it.
But once here, you can change it to another kind easily.
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Yea I got that Mr. N. Your explanation was really helpful and got me on the right track. I was more wondering about Brandex's point re: having to go to one's own country, rather than any country with a Chinese embassy, in order to get the "visiting relatives" visa for the child. I know that all of you guys took your kids to your own home countries, but I wasn't sure if that was a requirement, or if that's just what you did. I was just sort of working on the assumption that a Chinese visa could be gotten from another country as well and didn't even consider they might want us to go to America first. We were planning on traveling abroad, but not on going to the US. It doesn't matter terribly to us, as we can always go somewhere else over the summer, but a beach on Thailand would have been nice. Oh well, either it will work out or it won't I guess, and there's always ... Hainan instead! aoaoaoaoao
Because TIFC and you never know, I'm going to have my husband call up the Kunming PSB tomorrow and see what they say just to double (triple?) check. I did find a very helpful website from them with the exact requirements, forms and documents needed, time frame, etc. for this entry/exit permit. To answer my own question from before (in case it should benefit anyone in the future), the permit is called, in Chinese, a 中华人民共和国出入境通行证.
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I've been having a slightly different experience. I am married to a Chinese girl and we had our first child this year. We applied for and received the child's US passport and Certificate of Birth Abroad. We also went to the Shenzhen security bureau for the child's exit/entry permit.
The exit/entry permit is a nice 10 page or so book with the child's picture in it. However, it is only valid for 3 months and is only a single exit / entry. I was told I can take her out of China using this permit and bring her back to China using this permit. Next time we want to travel, we have to re-apply for another single exit/entry, 3 month, 10 page exit/entry permit. Ugh.
I was also told I could get her a China tourist visa to put in her US passport when we were in the US next. We might be able to get a multi-entry 1-year visa. But that means renewing it annually and each stay can only be 30 days (need to leave and come back monthly). This is quite burdensome.
I have a Resident Permit tied to the office I work in. I am told that the child, since her mother is Chinese and does not have a US green card, cannot get a dependent resident permit attached to me. More ugh.
There does not seem to be a easy way to get her paperwork straight so she can come and go easily.
Yokie
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I was also told I could get her a China tourist visa to put in her US passport when we were in the US next. We might be able to get a multi-entry 1-year visa. But that means renewing it annually and each stay can only be 30 days (need to leave and come back monthly). This is quite burdensome.
I would double check on the 30 days each stay part. Immediate family members of Chinese people can get 1 year multi entry visas with no limit to the number of stays. I have such a visa, as do my two parents (who, obviously, aren't even related to my Chinese husband by blood, they're just his in-laws). It is called a "visiting relatives" (探亲 in Chinese) visa. I think Mr. N has one for his daughter too, from what I gathered in this thread.
We decided to put the whole traveling abroad thing off for awhile though, because it is rather troublesome and for now our child is ok to stay here since he's a default Chinese citizen, having never used his Chinese passport.
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I would double check on the 30 days each stay part. Immediate family members of Chinese people can get 1 year multi entry visas with no limit to the number of stays. It is called a "visiting relatives" (探亲 in Chinese) visa.
This would be awesome. I did not this thing even existed. Thanks .... did you get it in China or outside of China? Renewable while in China or do we have to leave to renew?
Thanks for the info, feeling better already (but not much)
YK
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Sorry to possibly pour cold water, but depending on where you live and your wife and child are registered it may not be as easy as Local Dialect's experience. Here in Chengdu I was told I should be able to get a one-year tourist visa renewed indefinitely by my husband's (he's the Chinese one) hometown PSB. But when we asked them the same question, the hometown PSB said maybe yes maybe no. As they are not the head PSB for that area I would have to apply to them and they would then refer it to the head PSB (500km away) and I might or might not have to go in person to see them. No guarantees was what they were saying.
Meanwhile our kids, who are on UK passports, could get 6 month tourist visa but non-renewable in theory, although Chengdu PSB said that it was entirely possible hometown PSB would give them a year and renew it. Again, no definite answers, no guarantees. What Chengdu then said was that our kids could get some kind of certification from the UK linking them to their father (birth certificate translated, then approved by some UK body then approved by Chinese embassy as far as I understand it), if they have this then they can get indefinite renewal of 1-year tourist visa for sure (although even this I'm inclined to think "no guarantees"). Oh, and this is only possible because my husband has UK equivalent of green card.
So what me and the kids have currently are 2-yr multi-entry tourist visas, valid for 180 days each stay so we have to leave country every 180 days, although this could be as simple as going across border to HK, turning around and immediately re-entering China.
I would speak again to your office as your child is a US citizen and as such they should be able to get her a dependant visa attached to you regardless of her mother's immigration status. Really if they relocated you to China this is something they should be dealing with.
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We have the same thing, for our Oz daughter. Multiple entry visiting rellies visa. 11 montsh costs 400CNY.
Edited in later: She was born in china, we have gone home and back, so now she is on an Oz passport.
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Isn't this quite the headache .....
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That's a good point, you're on a work visa, so you should be able to get her a visa attached to your visa, sponsored by your school.
LSS, your kids were born in the UK, right? My son has a Chinese birth certificate written in Chinese, so that would be the link to their dad. Yokie says his kid was born in China too, so he should have the same thing. Although we haven't gone abroad yet, so my son doesn't have the visa, but we were told by the Beijing PSB when we went recently to ask about these things that it would be no problem getting our son the same kind of visa that I have when we do apply. It might be that you were running into problems because your kids were born in the UK and they won't accept UK documents unless they've been through official translation (when I got married in China I had to have my freaking passport translated by an official translation agency with a chop and all!).
But to answer your question Yokie, I got my visa in China, but my parents got theirs in America. It might well be easier getting it from the States, you could look into it next time you go. My parents got their 1 year visas simply by having a letter from my husband -- with his ID card number -- stating that they were his parents in law and that we would be responsible for them during their stay in China. They did it through a visa agency back home. I got my visa in Beijing -- although my husband has a Kunming hukou -- and it was a relatively easy and painless process as well.
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Thank you for the clarification.
We asked the security bureau about having my daughter get a visa similar to mine. I have been here for about 6 years and am a "representative" of the office I work in. So I get a resident permit in my passport. It gets renewed annually.
We were told that since my wife (the mother of the my daughter) is Chinese and does not hold a green card or passport from another country, then they would not give my daughter a dependent visa tied to me. Until she is 18 then she is allowed to decide. I hope when we apply in the US things are different. I'll keep you posted. We go to the US in Sept.
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Another update: the people who can help get visas for us in the US say I can get her a "visiting relative" visa which is basically a tourist visa with better options .... multi-year validity. But either a 180day stay and single entry/exit or multi entry/exit and 90day stays.
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It seems reasonable to me that since she is visiting you, and that she is a dependant, then her visa should have the same duration as yours.
Of course, reason is nothing to go on in these matters, nor do rules, regs or anything else with any kind of regularity. Only when it's convenient for the guy 'making decisions' (although I use that expression lightly).
We got our daughter's visa changed from tourist visa to visiting relatives when we got here. My embassy tells me with the recent rule change and more stringent enforcement, this is no longer possible. (tourist visa to any other, business visa to any other)
However, my FAO says no problem, and so does my wife, who actually gets our visas for us, not the uni, although she uses the uni's paperwork, of course. Daughter's visa didn't use any paperwork from my employer at all this time, although up until then we always have. Mrs N says it's simpler without the uni's paperwork for Little Miss N, although, of course, necessary for mine - but she says she is working on that too. Actually, she started getting my visas and daughter's visas processed before the regs came in about having to front up in person, simply because our FAO at the time was a lazy incompetent baijiu swilling butthead - although a nice guy, and treated me well, mostly by leaving me the hell alone.
In the process, she has learned a lot about the rules, but I can't understand it half the time. Her English is great, but my understanding and patience with trying to comprehend the intricate details of Chinese bureaucracy is virtually nil. I don't even like understanding my own, and I worked for the DoD for several years as a bureaucrat.
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He he ..... it seems reasonable to me too .... the little bit I can understand is that they do not want to acknowledge citizenship from another country until the kid is 18 and they decide what to be .... which kinda makes sense but still .... you're right, it mostly depends on who you talk to and how they feel that day. bqbqbqbqbq
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He he ..... it seems reasonable to me too .... the little bit I can understand is that they do not want to acknowledge citizenship from another country until the kid is 18 and they decide what to be .... which kinda makes sense but still .... you're right, it mostly depends on who you talk to and how they feel that day. bqbqbqbqbq
Be aware though, that whether she's 18 months or 18, the first time your kid uses the US passport, she is considered to be renouncing her Chinese citizenship, and officially cannot use her Chinese passport or Chinese hukou. Of course, if she doesn't have either of these things, that's not a problem, but that would be the reason why they make children who have Chinese hukous AND foreign passports renounce their hukou before they are given the exit/entry permit (a couple people in this thread had that issue). If she never leaves China, then yeah, technically she can choose her nationality when she's 18, but if you take her to your home country you're basically making that choice for her, since the US requires anyone with a US passport to use that passport when entering.
In any case, I guess 180 days is certainly better than 30, but not ideal, huh? Maybe after this year visa things might go back to normal. I would certainly try, if you are going to get her a visa back in the States, for the 1 year no restrictions multi entry visiting relatives visa. So much depends on how the stars line up and whether or not the visa officer had a fight with his wife that morning or won a game of ma-jiang the night before that you might get lucky.
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We've just been through this exercise with our daughter.
My wife is Chinese from Heilongjiang province and Allie was born in Dongguan last year. We got her naturalised and had an Aussie passport issued and were ready to show her off to the family at home last January before moving from Dongguan to Harbin. The PSB Entry/Exit buttheads in Dongguan said getting her the exit permit was no problem but because the wife was not from Guangdong they couldn't issue it.
We tried to get to Oz again during this summer holiday and were told by the PSB Entry/Exit buttheads up here that it was impossible to issue the exit visa because Allie is Chinese. End of discussion. They did suggest getting her a Chinese passport and an Aussie tourist visa. The Aussie embassy nixed that because they won't issue a tourist visa to a citizen.
As far as China is concerned she's Chinese. As far as Australia is concerned she's Australian. She's stuck here in China!
We've had to make a written application to have her Chinese citizenship revoked and are now waiting the 3 months for this process to occur.
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We made sure we didn't register little miss N in anything until we got her Oz citizenship. YOu have to be careful about that. That way, Little Miss N was nothing but Oz from birth, there was no argument, no need to revoke, no troubles or issues at all. Once it was done at least.
Don't register your kid's birth as chinese at all. Ignore all and sundry efforts to do that, and ignore the law as it simply doesn't apply to you, no matter what they say. We had people visiting, officials and the like, but I ignored them. (when Mrs N was visibly pregnant the local doctor came around to make sure she was registered for a baby and did she want it or wanted an abortion. I simply threw her out of the house, and not politely either. Mrs N said that was bad, but I didn't give a shit. Nothing happened.)
Your baby is (insert country of your own origin here)
That's what we did and it worked well.
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I hear you Mr. N. That's exactly what we did, too. She was not registered on anything anywhere. Depending on where you are the PowerSthatBe can optionally claim the child as Chinese by virtue of the mothers nationality, or not. Up here they did. In Dongguan they weren't worried about it. Mighty annoying.