How to get Russian citizenship for a child born in the USA

Photo from the personal archive of the author

A Russian child born in the United States receives American citizenship by right of soil, and Russian citizenship by birth, and for the latter it is enough that only one of his parents be a citizen of Russia. If both parents are Russians, then their American child cannot simply be given a Russian visa to travel to their historical homeland - the child must have Russian citizenship and a foreign passport. ForumDaily Prepared instructions on how to get a Russian passport while in the States.

Two roads, two ways

If you are in the United States and want to obtain Russian citizenship for a child born here, this can be done in two ways - collect all the documents yourself and take them to the Russian consulate or use the services of passport agencies.

The first option is convenient for residents of cities where there is a Russian embassy or consulate - Washington, New York. You can apply to the consulate personally, having previously made an appointment. At the same time, it is better to set the date of admission in advance, since sometimes you can wait from three to six months for your turn at the consulate.

If there is no Russian consulate in the state, the process of obtaining documents of the Russian Federation is significantly complicated. For example, representatives of the thousands of Russian diaspora in Miami need to fly to New York or Washington for the necessary documents. Some instead of traveling along the east coast prefer to simply go to a passport agency.

Option One: independent paperwork

Russian woman Julia Mitchell met her husband Joe during a trip to the USA under the Work and Travel program in 2010. In 2013, the couple got married in Russia and lived in Vladivostok for more than a year. A year later, Julia came to the United States on her wife’s visa, and a year later, the couple had a son, Craig. The happy family lives in Susanville, California.

Yulia thought about the fact that the child needs Russian citizenship and a foreign passport even during pregnancy. But we had to wait a little while submitting the documents - Craig’s birth certificate contained an error in Yulina’s maiden name. “At the hospital, my husband checked the accuracy of all the information and he overlooked the maiden name,” says Yulia.

It took about a month to receive an official addition to the certificate with the error corrected. Thus, Craig's birth certificate now consists of two pages and is valid only if both are present - the page of the certificate itself with the wrong last name and the page about making changes to the record.

As the manager stresses Russian Passport Agency Dmitry Lesin, if a child has an American birth certificate, you no longer need to receive a Russian one: “If both parents or the only parent are citizens of the Russian Federation at the time of birth, the child acquires citizenship by birthright. The consular institution stamps on the citizenship of the Russian Federation on the back of the consular stitching birth certificate with an apostil and certified translations, and this stitching is a complete replacement for the Russian birth certificate. Registration of the Russian birth certificate is not required. If only one of the parents is a citizen of the Russian Federation, and the second is a foreigner, then another procedure is carried out - acceptance into the citizenship of the Russian Federation in a simplified manner based on an application from the parent / guardian. Despite the fact that the procedure is formally different, in fact the child will receive exactly the same consular stitching with a stamp on the citizenship of the Russian Federation. ”

It was with the birth certificate that Julia began collecting documents to obtain a Russian passport for Craig. It was not difficult to do this - Yulia was guided by listpublished on the website of the consulate.

Documents required for registration of citizenship of the Russian Federation:

1. American passport child (if there is)

2. Russian parents passports and their copies (if one of the parents is American - a copy and translation of his passport)

3. Foreign passports both parents or the parent who has Russian citizenship)

4. Consent from an American parent to acquire a child of citizenship of the Russian Federation. This document is signed at the consulate. If a parent-american cannot come to the consulate, consent must be issued, notarized, put down the apostille and translated into Russian

5. Marriage certificate (original and copy; if the mother changed her last name, you also need to bring the mother’s birth certificate and its copy with you)

6. Statement for registration of Russian citizenship - the so-called appendix №7

7. Money order for $ 25 for the consulate’s assurance of the fidelity of the transfer of the child’s birth certificate (if one of the parents is American, then another $45 for certifying the American parent's signature on consent).

The money order is issued in the name of the consulate you are going to. For example, Consulate General of Russia in San Francisco - if we are talking about the consulate in the state of California, the city of San Francisco. You can only get a Money-order for the consulate at the post office; the consulate does not accept Money-order from other places and other methods of payment.

8. Birth certificate of the child, translated into Russian, with an apostille. Translation of a birth certificate is done independently, according to samplepublished on the website of the consulate. In the column “certificate number” it is necessary to enter the number indicated on the birth certificate under the bar code.

Birth certificate is made automatically on the basis of papers filled in the maternity hospital. After weeks of 6-8, you just need to pick him up either from the clerk at the county office where your child was born (for example, San Mateo County Clerk Office) or at the local Health Department. If you received the document in the Department, before sending it to the apostille, you must go to the clerk's office to authenticate the document. You can reach the clerk without an appointment. His service costs about $ 10.

To put down the apostille, you must send the original birth certificate to the state secretariat. You can find your state’s secretariat and address at National State Secretariat Association website.

In addition to the birth certificate, the secretariat must send:

• check for the amount $ 20;
• a note stating that the apostille is needed for the Russian Federation;
• empty an envelope with your mailing address (a certificate with an apostil will be sent to youwhen it is ready; as a rule, it is done no more than two weeks).

To obtain Russian citizenship for her son Craig, Yulia prepared just such a package of documents. “I translated the child’s birth certificate into Russian according to the sample, and translated the appendix to it, where my correct maiden name is indicated, myself, since I couldn’t find a template for such an appendix anywhere. The consulate explained that the main thing is the correctness and accuracy of the translation, and it doesn’t matter in what form it is made,” Yulia shares her experience. Julia also translated her husband Joe’s passport herself.

Yulia signed up for the consulate before all the documents were ready. “It’s very convenient that a child doesn’t need to sign up for a passport separately, they accept all documents along with documents for citizenship,” shares Julia’s experience.

Notice that the Russian birth certificate is ready, came exactly two weeks after the submission of documents. The finished certificate must be collected in person at the consulate. The consulate does not send documents by mail.

Julia, Joe and Craig Mitchell. Photos from the personal archive.

Option Two: registration through the passport agency

Russian woman Kamil Belyaeva, who lives with her husband in Thailand, gave birth to her son Dominic in Honolulu, Hawaii, in February 2016. Initially, she planned to draw up all the documents for the child independently.

“We planned to send my dad to San Francisco, but then it turned out that he would not be able to submit documents because he is a citizen of Kazakhstan. Flying the whole family from Hawaii to the continent is, to put it mildly, expensive. Therefore, immediately after the birth, we began to look for intermediaries,” says Kamilya.

When Dominic was three weeks old, and a little more than a month was left before the flight home, Camila in Instragram came across a photo of a girl from California, whose son had just received a Russian passport. I signed with her, took the contacts of the passport agency through which she made the documents, and also used their services.

“For us, the decisive factor in choosing an intermediary was the recommendation of a real person, while faceless reviews on company websites did not inspire confidence. By the way, they asked for payment for services when the documents were already ready and waiting to be sent. As a result, the registration “without leaving home” took about two weeks and was several times cheaper than flying to the consulate,” Kamilya shares her experience.

Kamil Belyaeva and her son Dominic. Photos from the personal archive

At the same time, the manager Russian Passport Agency Dmitry Lesin notes: "In the case when one of the parents is not a citizen of the Russian Federation, the procedure for the adoption of a child to the citizenship of the Russian Federation is not necessary, unlike the situation when both parents are citizens of the Russian Federation."

Russian Arthur lives in Florida with his wife and two daughters. There is no Russian consulate in the state. For their eldest daughter, her parents completed all Russian documents themselves in 2013. To do this, Arthur flew to Washington twice to the Russian Embassy: the first time he submitted the papers, the second time he picked them up. The process of processing Russian documents took, in general, about a month. Now the procedure has changed a little: you just need to bring the papers to the embassy or consulate yourself. Russian services are already sending completed documents by mail.

They decided to receive Russian documents for their youngest daughter, who was born in 2015, through a passport agency. Arthur this time had neither the time nor the physical ability to fly to Washington, leaving the spouse alone with two young children.

“In total, processing American and Russian documents for the child both times cost about $1000, but due to the difference in the dollar exchange rate, the cost in rubles in 2015 was much higher - 34 thousand rubles in 2013 and 65 thousand rubles in 2015 year. We paid $700 for the services of the passport agency. The documents were ready within one week,” says Arthur. “But if in the first case the personal labor costs were enormous, since everything had to be carefully studied in order to avoid any mistakes, then the second time everything was much simpler.”

Intermediaries Arthur's family was looking carefully not to run into scammers. They chose a company that stood out from both reviews of friends and personal feelings from communicating with its employees. In addition, the fact that Arthur himself received documents for the first time helped to understand the approaches of the passport agency and make the right choice.

See also:

How to get a US passport for a child

How to pass a test for US citizenship

How to become Americans: the naturalization ceremony in Washington

Four ways to get US citizenship

How to get a visa in the United States after refusal

New rules for changing migration status published in the USA

Rules of traveling abroad for green card holders

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