How dual citizenship works for US/UK kids
Our kids are lucky enough to hold passports for both the United States and the United Kingdom. This makes them super cool even though I wipe their butts on a regular basis.
How does this work? And how can you get dual citizenship for your kiddos? Here’s my handy checklist:
Step 1: If you are American, marry someone from England.
Step 2: Have a baby with that Brit.
Step 3: Get a birth certificate from the USA (assuming that’s where you live).
Step 4: Get a UK passport for your baby too.
The last step is complicated (but maybe not as complex as having a baby). We just got my youngest daughter’s UK passport while living in the US, and I can walk you through how we did it.
First, use the UK government website
Unlike the antiquated bureaucracy of the US government (I just had to send a check through the mail to renew my US passport, for example), the UK government is pretty streamlined. They try to make things simple and easy to complete digitally, praise be. You can start the online passport application here.
Next, get your list of required documents
This is the part with the most room for problems IMO. I actually started the application on the UK government website, then took a screenshot of all the paperwork needed, and came back and completed the application later because I had no idea how long the paperwork would take.
You’ll likely need: your baby’s birth certificate, both parents’ birth certificates, your marriage certificate, all four grandparents’ birth certificates, both sets of grandparents’ marriage certificates, plus any divorce documents as needed to explain name changes and so on. And it’s all gotta be originals, of course!
Then, request all your documents
Again, the UK process is streamlined. You can request all the documents needed from the same government website. You’ll have to pay a fee per document, and everything will be mailed to you pretty quickly.
The US is trickier. Each state has different recordkeeping processes and hoops to jump through in order to get documents. I found the Wisconsin and Michigan sites to be simple enough, but we were unable to get necessary documents from New Jersey. This was after a bunch of phone calls and a handwritten mailed request that including supporting documentation proving our right to access the information. Luckily, the grandparent found a copy of the document so we didn’t have to deal with New Jersey anymore.
(I think the moral of the story is to keep records of your parents’ births and marriages, because you never know when you might need them.)
Get a UK passport pic of your baby
Because the photo specs for UK passports are different than US passports, this is a trickier step than it might seem at first. You don’t want your application to get rejected because a photo was off by a millimeter!
Also, I got both our kids’ passports when they were under 6 months old, which made it extra tricky to get a good photo since they couldn’t even sit up yet.
I had bad luck with Walgreens, which said it could accommodate for UK specs, but afterward I realized they had photoshopped the pictures to crop out the background (the UK requirements are specific that no photoshopping is allowed).
Instead, I found a specialty photography store that provided much better service. I brought the list of requirements from the UK website and worked with the photographer to make sure everything was correct. Another example: US passport photos allow the baby to be in a car seat, this is a no-no for UK passport photos. (You have to just lie the baby down and take the photo from above.)
Find a trusted friend with a passport
One weird step in the passport process is getting a third party to confirm the information in your application. This is super awkward, because you have to ask someone to look at a link from the UK government, then give you a scanned and printed copy of the details page of their US passport, which you then include in the paperwork you send off with your application. Hey neighbor, your lawn is looking great. Also, can I get a copy of your passport?
There are rules about who you can ask. Like, it has to be someone you’ve known for at least a couple of years, and it can’t be a family member or even your family doctor. So yes, we ended up asking a neighbor both times.
Submit your application and get a passport
Once you finish the online portion of the application, you are given an address to send all the documents and passport photo to, as well as the British parent’s passport. If all goes well, you’ll get your baby’s UK passport in just a few weeks. Ta-da!
Children’s passports are only good for five years, so you’ll be renewing before you know it. But we just went through the renewal process for our oldest kiddo, and it was pretty painless.
So what does it all mean?
From what I vaguely remember when figuring this out five years ago, getting this type of passport is filed under “citizenship by descent”, which means our kids are British citizens because they have a British parent but were born outside the UK. This type of citizenship means their children won’t automatically qualify for British citizenship too.
I did a bunch of research on citizenship, but that gets really overwhelming, really fast. Stuff about registering at the embassy and filling out forms and completing lots of confusing, expensive tasks.
In the end, it seems a lot simpler to just get their passports, as that’s a fairly definitive way to establish their right to live and work in the UK. This page of the UK government website explains it pretty clearly.
And I figure it’s easier to get their passports when they’re kids, so I just did it right away. Before the UK government has a chance to change their minds and decide that you can only get a passport if you were born under the third moon in the six month to a red-haired wolf named Clarita. Or something like that.
