British Expatriate Network

Finally, we have received two UK passports (a renewal and a first passport) from the British Embassy in Washington DC. We sent the application off on 8th April and received them Fedex this morning, so that is exactly 5 weeks. Their website says that they try to have them out in two weeks.

What we did:

For the renewal: simply filled out the form downloaded from the Consulate website , included a couple of US passport photos, had them counter-signed by my paediatrician who happens to be English, and sent it in along the expired passport.

For the first passport: did the above but included additional documents that were specified on the website:
[list][*]her US passport
[*]her US birth certificate (the official one issued by the county
[*]my birth certificate
[*]DH's birth certificate
[*]our marriage certificate
[*]photocopy of my green card
[*]photocopy of the picture page of my passport
[*]photocopy of the picture page of DH's passport[/list:u]

We did not register her birth with the Consulate. It appears when you first read the website that you need to do this, at a surprising great expense, in order to establish British citizenship. When you read the passport FAQs closely, you realise that this is not necessary as they still need to see parents' birth certs etc. (the nationality act determines citizenship based on the parents' birth details/citizenship and not on the child's, therefore a consular birth cert is meaningless for passport purposes).

Incidentally, for Brit-Netters in Canada, it's a very similar process from the British High Commission in Ottawa and one can also download all the forms from their website. wink

Our duaghter was born in the US and we obtained a Passport for her in much the same way.

We didn't register her birth. Although, this IMO was a mistake. Apparently, it will be a lot easier for her to replace a lost passport if she has a Consular Birth Certificate.

Good news though is that we can register her birth via the British Embassy here in Bangkok. They will sign to say that they have seen the relevant documents and forward the form to Washington for registration.