Baby Becomes American
An American and an Australian navigate citizenship for their UK-born baby
As I’m American, the United States considers any child of mine to be a citizen at birth — as long as we report it before they reach the age of majority. My husband Robert’s country, Australia, is happy to have any of his children become citizens through descent, with the right paperwork. But the UK is only fine to keep our London-born stateless child (previous post on this topic) so long as he doesn’t leave. After that, he’ll need a visa.
We’ve got tickets to the U.S. for February — so this baby needs a passport, from at least one of our two countries.
“Which of our bureaucracies do you think is faster?” Robert asks me. He wants to race — because we both suppose his country, Australia, will win.
But parenting is a co-op game, so Robert helps me get my American e-application in while I breastfeed, and I help him find the documents to upload through the Australian portal.
Most of the documentation is straightforward: passports, birth certificate, marriage certificate, filled-in forms. For the United States, we can apply for passport and social security number at the same time as citizenship, which is convenient.
