Questions about the N-600 and Birth Certificates post final adoption

You don't get a birth certificate automatically. Even if your attorney sent your child's adoption decree and the paperwork submitted to the court to your state's Vital Records department, you will still have to make a formal application and sign it, in most cases. The good news is that you won't have a lot of paperwork to supply, if it already has the decree with any necessary name change order and the foreign birth certificate given to the court. Just call Vital Records to see what the department needs. If it has everything except the basic application form, you may get a certificate in a week or two. You do not need a copy of your I-600 to get a passport; that is ludicrous. The I-600 just allows the child to get a visa to come home from his birth country to your state. What the man probably meant was that you need a copy of your child's foreign passport, showing that your child entered the U.S. legally on an IR-4 visa, as well as the foreign adoption and U.S. readoption paperwork. Sharon

She is talking about the N600. The COC application form. Some people have been able to get a passport without a COC but many have not. My suggestion would be to go to a local passport office as opposed to your post office and give it a try. You might get lucky!

Good morning, Thank you for your reply. Yes, I was asking about the N600 (or the N600-K, as we are moving back to Europe). I don't quite understand what it is for (if I already have the birth certificate) and if it is obligatory?According to the US Consulate here, a Birth Certificate is sufficient to get a passport. I will try that, but am still trying to figure out the purpose of the N-600. It is an expensive procedure, so I want to be sure that it is really necessary and not just another formality.Thank you for your help,Kind regards,Kore

Regardless of what the Consulate is telling you, the vast majority of the people posting here have had to provide a COC to get a passport. Even if they were able to submit the initial application without it, most people find that while the passport is being processed the State Department requests the COC. This is a relatively recent change - as recently as 3-4 years ago people were getting passports without the COC - but that is the experience of the people posting here, regardless of what the actual 'requirements' are. You might be lucky and get one without it, but the only way to know for sure is to try. As far as filing the N600 and getting your child a COC (passport issues aside) in my opinion, getting your child a COC is very important. Personally, I feel that especially in this post-9/11 society and continuously increasing US security measures, I want my children's legal names on file with USCIS as citizens and want that certificate to prove it without a shadow of a doubt. In the case of your child, while the finalization made your child a US citizen, to USCIS knowledge he is still a legal resident until you submit that finalization paperwork with the N600 so they can update their files. The vast majority of people also find that Social Security will not update their child's status from Legal Resident to Citizen without seeing a COC - and verifying it with USCIS. They may never need it beyond the passport and SSA (which you may be able to get past) but I have been told that for things like joining the military, government jobs that require security clearance, some college scholarships, things like that, it may be necessary and if they want to adopt internationally one day, they will need it to prove their citizenship. A passport can show citizenship, but it expires and is issued by the State Department, not USCIS/Homeland Security. The new birth certificate that is issued by your state will most likely still say the child was born in another country, and does not prove citizenship. (There are a few states that issue the birth certificate showing they were born in the issuing state, but that opens up all new issues that I am not going to get into.) Yes, you could present an adoption decree, readoption/finalization papers, court ordered name change papers, etc. for some things. But many (if not most) of us have experienced at one time or another, someone in a position of authority who would not accept these papers even if they were totally valid. Off my soapbox now!

A birth certificate is proof of citizenship ONLY if a person is born in the U.S., since, by U.S. law, anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen, even if his/her mother was an illegal immigrant. A birth certificate, or more accurately, a certificate of foreign birth, is NOT proof of citizenship for a person born overseas to non-U.S. citizens, since the person may or may not have acquired U.S. citizenship upon coming to the U.S. There are only two U.S. documents that constitute proof of U.S. citizenship for a foreign born person who has become a U.S. citizen. The one that is good in 100% of all situations where proof of citizenship is required is the certificate of citizenship (CoC). The other, good in about 95% of all such situations, is a U.S. passport. Technically, you do not need a CoC to obtain a passport for an internationally adopted child. All you need is his/her foreign birth certificate, foreign adoption decree, a readoption/recognition document if the child came home on an IR-4 visa, and proof of any legal name change that was done; a legal name change can occur as part of readoption, and is reflected in a sentence in the adoption decree about the new name, and it can also occur via a separate name change order issued by your state courts. You also need a SSN and proof that at least one parent is a U.S. citizen by birth or naturalization. The Passport Agency is an arm of the U.S. State Department. The State Department is authorized by U.S. law to "adjudicate status" -- determine who is and who is not a citizen, by looking at original documents -- just like the USCIS. So, technically, if you bring all the above original documents to a Passport Agency, it can review them, determine that your child qualified for automatic citizenship upon readoption/recognition of the adoption in your state, because of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, and issue a passport accordingly. Unfortunately, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, people in some Passport Agency offices seem to have become really worried about the possibility that they will accidentally issue a passport to someone who should not have one, and who could do harm. As a result, there is a reluctance, in those offices, to adjudicate status for anyone, even for internationally adopted babies who need a passport. The staff seem to want the USCIS to bear responsibility for adjudicating status, just in case there is a mistake. So the bottom line is that these offices often require families of adopted kids to submit a CoC. It's worth the effort to try to get a U.S. passport without a CoC, as some Passport Agency offices still issue them. However, if you are denied, you will need the CoC. If you don't have one, and first have to file the N-600 now, be aware that processing times can be very long. There was a time, not long ago, when some offices were taking close to a year; I hope that the wait has decreased, but I can't guarantee it. By the way, the form you should file is the N-600 for an adopted child, and not the N-600K. Sharon

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