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| London, United Kingdom |  Review on August 16, 2012: |
Holly2234
Rating:  | Review Topic: Other Experience
This is a review for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad.
Im going to go from the beginning at Kings Cross and St. Pancras to help anybody coming through there! After getting off the train, we headed towards the underground station. Once down there we paid £7 each (after 9:30am I believe) and went to platform 4 (towards Brixton) on the Victoria line. We changed at Oxford Circus to the Central line (towards Ruislip) and got off a Bond Street. Once we got out (with a lot of difficulty with a stroller!) we turned left onto Oxford Street. We walked down probably 4 or 5 blocks until we came to North Audley Street on our left. We turned down there, walked along to almost the end and found Goulds on the other side of the street. An assistant in there took our phones and camera and put them in the small bag for £3. He took my phone number and name and wrote them on the bag and I paid at the counter. They gave me a raffle style ticket back to keep until I wanted my things back. They had a sheet showing what kind of things you cant take in so it makes things easy!
Once we got to the embassy (literally 2 minutes from Goulds) we had to go to a desk with two women in blue jackets who I didnt even see straight away! They had a list with our names on and pointed us to the security building for Citizen Services. When we got in, they had us walk through the metal detector and it went off so we took off watches and belts and they swabbed the stroller in random places, I didnt get an explanation for this but they did it twice and not much more was said.
When we got inside (lots of steps, hell with a stroller) we had to give our names to the DX Secure desk and they gave us a number.
Inside, there are plenty of toys for children and it looks very much like a doctors waiting room with bank teller style booths.
We got in at 11:15, our appointment was 11:30. We first got called up at 11:35 to desk 2 and we were asked for all of our documents. The lady saw I had a folder so she asked to have it and take what she needed. She took the documents she wanted and gave the rest back and sent us to pay at desk 9. Cards and cash are accepted. Dollars or Pounds are accepted and they have a very good exchange rate for paying in pounds.
We sat down again for roughly an hour. We got called back and asked why our daughters birth certificate had a later date on it. It was because we re-registered her birth after we were married on the advice of the Registrar where we got married. The first one was destroyed and the new one is now the official. They said they had never come across this before so there were a LOT of questions and we had to write and sign an affidavit of our explanation.
We were called back again to fill in some forms to swear my husband is the father of our daughter since we were unmarried at the time of her birth. It was questions like when we met, when we started living together etc.
Finally we were called back again and a very friendly man said “This is a different case so i'll go through it all with you”. He basically explained what we had applied for, double checked he had the right information and said “Is everything true to the best of your knowledge?” To which we both just answered yes. He finally said to our daughter “Congratulations, you are now a citizen of the United States of America!” to which she replied “Ha!” (she's a toddler!)
We finally got out of there at 2pm so be sure to leave plenty of time. Everybody was very friendly and did their best to help us.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #10198