Australian passport for newborn

[Vickyglitz]

Hello! My baby girl has an Australian daddy. We have just applied for citizenship by descent online before applying for a passport. Processing time is 3 months!!! Anyone had this done sooner than that?! We really need a passport.

Contact the embassy or the government office who manages Australian passports and ask them if they can be processed faster somehow.
I know you can pay extra to get British passports processed faster for children who are British by descent but are abroad.

Can you not get her her other (UK or whatever) passport quicker and use that for whatever you need to use it for? (Travel?)

It’ll be a bit stressful chewing your fingers through that long timeframe if you’re under time pressure.

Are you in Australia, where was she Born?

You need to speak to the embassy/consulate if you're in the UK, and the passport office directly if you're in Australia. It might be that a temporary travel document would suffice until you're able to get the permanent passport.

When are you planning to travel after the birth? Are you (the mother) planning to travel as well? I assume this would be a longhaul flight in which case you might need to speak to your midwife about the likelihood of being medically cleared to fly. You don't want to risk a DVT which could be a very real risk after birth particularly if you end up having a c-section.

It might be worth looking into dual citizenship and getting the baby a UK passport for that first trip and getting the Australian one later.

Or is the baby already born? I'm a bit confused as there's not much information in your post. You might want to have this moved to Living Overseas as this might be a more likely place to get advice.

Citizenship can’t be speeded up- does she have a passport for any other country that you can use?

I recently applied online for Australian Citizenship by Descent for my three children. They said that the 75% of the cases are done within 4 months so I expected a long wait. I got the certificates in the post after 3 weeks. I think it's quite straightforward if you provide all the right documents.

Would it be faster to just get their other citizenship first? My dc all have citizenship of 3 countries by birth due to me and dh both having multiple citizenships, one of which is Australian. We found it simplest to apply for their British passports first as we were living there when they were born and it was a faster process than applying for the other passports (we were travelling around 4 months after their births each time). We then applied for the Australian and the other passport some time later as rhey were both longer wait times.

Hi Microwavey - how long did the Aussie citizenship take?

Hi @KeepingTheWormsQuiet - did they notify you your application had been successful when it got processed?

Hi @Microwavey - how long did the Aussie citizenship take?

When I applied for dd2 citizen by descent it took three months to get certificate and then you have to make an appointment at Australia House for passport, it wS about 10 weeks wait for that, and then her passport arrived about 1 week later.
You have to go to Australia house in person to apply for a passport for a child, you cannot do it online.. Last time we renewed them was approx 7 yrs ago.. Might have changed now.

@theredjellybean so you applied for citizenship by descent quite some time ago then?

What nationality are you? Where was your daughter born? Where are you normally resident?

Yes about 12yrs ago
Dd was born here in UK, both parents with dual nationality

@QuinionsRainbow I am Russian and husband is dual Aussie and Portuguese. The easiest passport to apply for is the Aussie one. We are also trying for Portuguese. Our daughter isn't entitled to UK citizenship. We are resident in the UK.

Why the rush?

If you’re legally settled in the U.K., and she was born in the U.K., she should be a British citizen.

www.gov.uk/check-british-citizen

(And legally settled should be straightforward to prove as dad has an EU passport.)

Resident doesn't necessarily equate to indefinite leave to remain, although the husband will be allowed to stay due to EU citizenship via Portugal - I'm not sure that the EU right to remain qualifies a child for UK citizenship though. And if they are going for Aussie and Portuguese they probably can't go for UK as well as usually it's just two nationalities you can have (and I don't think you can split dual ones between EU either) - so if the Portuguese is important, then they're right not to pursue UK citizenship.

IDLR doesn’t come into it.

I’m not sure there’s a two nationality limit, either. I’ve known people with three passports. Who would enforce it, anyway?

That's what it says on your link.

Perhaps I'm wrong about three passports... I've never known it, so I might be making an assumption there. I just know from living in Germany some people I know here don't want to naturalise because it would mean giving up their citizenship of another country. I know some countries won't honour dual nationality and require you to give up other passports.

You need ILR

But if he’s an EU citizen, he’s without the IDLR thing entirely.

I know Italy used to ban their citizens from holding additional nationalities and Poland still does, (although I have Polish dual national friends who happily ignore that), so I’m sure some countries have stipulated it at various times, but not the UK currently.