Since I gave birth to our first wonderful baby girl we were so happy of the thought that she is already an American. At the same time we knew that she can also have the chance to be a dual citizen because of us, her parents. We got so excited to register her to be a natural Filipino that’s why we went to the Philippine embassy in San Francisco here in California to apply for the report of birth.

REPORT OF BIRTH

What is it about?

It is a declaration of the birth of a Filipino child born abroad or overseas. This is a legal process done in the consulate by both Filipino citizen parents or one who is not naturalized yet in a foreign country. This process should be done immediately in order to register such birth with the Office of Civil Registrar General in Manila.

Why is it important?

1. It’s a legal responsibility of a Filipino citizen parent to duly register the birth of a child to the consulate immediately.
2. The report of birth is a proof that a child born in a foreign country is a natural born Filipino. This means that the child is accepted to have dual citizenship or dual nationality.
3. As a natural born Filipino, the child will have the rights of a dual citizen. See all details and read all the benefits of a dual citizen here: http://www.philippineconsulatela.org/consular-services-2/dual-citizenship-ra-9225
4. When the child is already registered in the consulate, he/she will be able to practice the benefits of being a Filipino in the Philippines such as land ownership.
5. The child will have his/her own Philippine birth certificate and will be eligible to have a Filipino passport too which means traveling and staying for long in the Philippines won’t be any problem at all.

I started to search online about the requirements for the report of birth application. I found the official website of the consulate (Phil. Embassy San Francisco CA http://www.philippinessanfrancisco.org/) and the information I needed was so easy to be found.

What are the requirements for Report of Birth?

• First and foremost you have to check if the birth you want to report is under the jurisdiction of the consulate through the consulate’s finder site that can also be found on the official website (if within U.S). In this way when you apply to the right consulate the process of any legal documents will be faster.
• Fill-up the report of birth form

FYI: The child’s place of birth should be the city and the state where she was born. As stated in the form all details of the parents should be based at the time of child’s birth. All the required documents are listed on the consulate’s website, you can print it as your guide or checklist. This is the preview of the lists:

FYI: The cover letter is not necessary if the applicants if parents will go personally to the consulate or walk-in application; Don’t miss to read the “note” that was included on the pdf file found in the last paragraph of the page “how to file a report of birth” consulate’s website; Follow strictly what it says on the list depending on your case for example if it says 5 copies for each legal document then complete each.

What are the ways of filing the report of birth?

• Walk-in application or personally apply (bost husband and wife) to the consulate/embassy.
• Through mail or courier
• Getting a scheduled appointment to the Philippine Consular Outreach event assigned by consulate.

How much does it cost?

Both report of marriage and report of birth cost $25 each application

We live in Solano County in California so we went to the Philippine Consulate General base in San Francisco. The consulate which is located in 447 Sutter Street,San Francisco, CA 94108 is 24 miles away from where we live and we drove off for about an hour to get there. We made sure to arrive as early as possible so we can be first in line.

What is the Consular’s Service Hours?

Check the official website of the consulate before going and make sure to bring every necessary required documents for any of your application.

What are the process in filing the report?

The consulates flow chart procedure when filing a report of marriage in San Francisco, California can be found easily on their website.

The Experience

I have to edit a lot of things from  the form I submitted like the place of birth of my baby, I’ve included the county where I gave birth but according to the consul they needed the city and state only. Its very convenient that I separated all the requirements for the report of birth application to the report of marriage application in a separate folders, it was easy for the officer to segregate each copy to verify it to the original document.

Read full experience in the Report of Marriage post.