Friday, February 02, 2007

Expat life: Obtaining a US citizenship if your baby is born in India

Disclaimer: A friend who went through this process suggested I put this up. This is meant to give you some general information. Please consult the appropriate consulate for all the relevant and up to date information before proceeding with the process.
If you (one or other of the parents) are a US citizen and you plan to have a baby in India, you can record your your child's birth with the US consulates here in India and obtain a US passport for your baby.

You will first need to locate the US consulate that serves the city in which you live. This website of the US consulate (look under "Reports of Births Abroad" and "Passports") in Chennai, for example, provides all of the information you need to gather the necessary documents.

If you are pregnant before you move to India or if you know you are planning to have a baby when you move to India, then you can save yourself some grief by bringing these documents with you before you move here:

1. Your marriage certificate, or if divorced, your divorce decree;
2. Your hospital records with all the original ultrasound scans;
3. Proof of US citizenship;
4. Proof of residence in the US.

You can call ahead and request a package that'll set out in detail all of the requirements for obtain the record of birth abroad and the passport. One of the requirements is the baby's birth certificate (which of course you can only obtain after the baby is born here). For that you need to figure out the city corporation office that serves the area in which your hospital is located. Once you do that, they will need the birth report that the hospital will give you when you leave the hospital and an application asking for a birth certificate. A couple of days later you can collect it from the corporation office.

As I mentioned, your first stop should be the consulate's website for all of this information. Also filling out all if the forms they send beforehand would be a good idea.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My babies are born in India. My husband is US citizen so we got US citizenship for them. They have US passport. Now we want to travel to US. Do my children need visa or just exit permit ? how to get those ?

Sujatha Bagal said...

Anon, you should check with the US consulate closest to you for that information. Good luck.

Anonymous said...

Hi,
If one of u is an indian citizen, u can get PIO ( person of indian origin)cards which are actually visa to india for 15 years. If the kids are US citizens, they dont need a visa to travel to the US, EU and many other countries that do not require a visa for a US citizen. They do require an Indian visa to come back to India which they need not apply for repeatedly if they have PIO cards.
Now if one of the parents is an Indian, the kids can have both Indian as well as US passports too.
Please do check this firsthand though.
Thanks
Sum

Anonymous said...

Hi

This is sangeethasardar
we are staying in us ohio so iam planning to come to india with my son so i want to know if i come there i can get admisson for him
now he completed 3 years and i want to know whether any writing work is there in cbse school so if we come there we have to face any problem