Hello everyone,
the VJ forums have been helpful in finding clarity around the correct path to citizenship for our son so I thought I would share what I found.
We are in a situation where my wife was born outside of the United States and acquired her citizenship at birth through Consular Birth Abroad as her mother met the requirements to pass along her citizenship.
Our son, born in 2005, did not qualify for a Report of Consular Birth Abroad due to the fact that his mother had not met the requirements of time spent living in the USA over the age of 14.
This led us to researching and finding the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 specifically section 322. There is a provision in this act allowing you to acquire citizenship through the child's grandparents providing the following:
This form is an application for U.S. citizenship (acquisition) and issuance of a Certificate of Citizenship under section 322 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) for a child who regularly resides outside of the United States.
and
Have a U.S. citizen parent who has been physically present in the United States for a period or periods totalling at least 5 years, at least 2 of which were after 14 years of age. If your U.S. citizen parent does not meet this requirement, your U.S. citizen parent’s own U.S. citizen parent (grandparent) has to have been physically present in the United States for a period or periods totaling at least 5 years, at least 2 of which were after 14 years of age
As we live and regularly reside in Canada and our child's grandmother met the requirements we found this was the best path to citizenship for our child. The process was expensive ($600 USD) + eventual cost of travel to the USA for interview.
We gathered the required documentation needed to file our paperwork, documents proving the child's grandmothers USC status i.e. Birth Certificate, Marriage Certificate, High School Graduation Documents, Copies of Year Book pages, signed affidavits corroborating USC Grandmother's time in the USA.
We filled out the documentation in January of this year and took it along with copies of all of our paperwork to the local FedEx office. We had had a USD Money order/Bank Draft created earlier at our bank to send along with the paperwork. It is key that your bank draws its funds from a USA institution when processed by USCIS or it can not be completed. Our bank, CIBC does use a USA bank for processing USD money orders.
We paid for next day delivery of our documents and they arrived and were signed for at the Phoenix, AZ office the very next afternoon. We heard back with confirmation that the documents had been received in the middle of February and that they had been passed along to our selected interview office in Seattle.
Early in April we received an email from the USCIS office in Yakima, WA that they had taken over our case and would like to set up a time for our son to come in and interview. We responded with a date that worked and prepared our trip and documents.
If you will be flying to the USA for your interview it is important that you bring a copy of your completed I-94. As we were driving into the USA we were electronically processed using NEXUS and didn't need to have a copy of the I-94.
Arriving at USA customs the day prior to the interview the officer asked where we were headed and the purpose of our trip, I told him that we were on our way to Yakima, WA and that our purpose was for an interview to have our son's N600K application finalized. He said "I don't know what that is but sounds good" and we were sent on our way.
The next day we arrived at the interview at our scheduled time, the interviewer focussed almost solely on our son asking him questions about the details of his application (he is 10) and who the people were listed on the documents i.e. Grandmother, Grandfather. This process took less than half an hour. We were asked to come back in an hour to complete the process as the person responsible for certificate completion was on lunch.
We arrived back at the office in the allowed time and were walked through the rest of the process. Due to our son's age he didn't have to take an oath however, my USC wife had to sign stating that she understood the oath.
At that point we were given the completed certificate and drove back to Canada.
Hi everyone,
This is my first post and I imagine some of you have already asked this question, but I have yet to find the answer that I need. Here is Our situation:
I am a U.S citizen, my husband is a Lithuanian citizen and we actually live in the Czech Republic. We have been married for nearly 2 1/2 years and are now planning to move back to my hometown.
We are about to file the I-130 in the next several days most of our paper work is complete and evidence ready what we don't know and are struggling to find out is how do we pay when we are abroad!? I am sure we are not the first and we are definitely not the last, but USCIS (http://www.uscis.gov/forms/paying-immigration-fees)%C2'> say to contact your local embassy or consulate however Embassies/ consulates no longer get involved in the Green card process anymore so they will not answer our question and I called USCIS and of course whoever I spoke to had no idea either.
We were told we can get an "international draft" of course in US currency, what I want to know is if we do this are we able to us a local bank as we do not have a US based bank in the Czech Republic, and what do we do to do this, a routing number or any bank information? I know if you write a check it is written to U.S Homeland Security, is this the same for a draft?
Or if you are living abroad and have filed how did you pay? Any advice will be helpful!
Thanks
You might rely on the physical presence of the child’s U.S. citizen grandparent to meet the requirement.
3. Reliance on Physical Presence of Child’s U.S. Citizen Grandparent
If the child’s parent does not meet the physical presence requirement, the child may rely on the physical presence of the child’s U.S. citizen grandparent to meet the requirement. In such cases, the officer first must verify that the citizen grandparent, the citizen parent’s mother or father, is a U.S. citizen at the time of filing. If the grandparent has died, the grandparent must have been a U.S. citizen and met the physical presence requirements at the time of his or her death.
Like in the case of the citizen parent, the officer also must ensure that:
•The U.S. citizen grandparent has been physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for at least five years; and
•The U.S. citizen grandparent met such physical presence for at least 2 years after he or she reached 14 years of age.
Like the citizen parent, a grandparent’s physical presence is calculated in the aggregate and includes time accrued in the United States during periods when the grandparent was not a U.S. citizen.
tabletalk got a reaction from kiwibean in N600-K