Registering a birth abroad

Registering a birth abroad

Registering a birth with a Pakistani consulate is one of the cheaper and faster procedures, and it is postal. Nobody has to bring a newborn to a counter.

The essentials

  • $30, by money order or cashier's check payable to the consulate. Personal checks are refused and the fee is not refundable.
  • Three business days from the moment the consulate receives a complete file by courier.

What to send

  • Form S1, completed and signed.
  • Two current passport-size photographs of the child, front view, white background.
  • The birth certificate, original and copy.
  • Proof of the father's Pakistani nationality: the original and a copy of his CNIC, NICOP or passport.
  • The fee, in the accepted form.
  • A prepaid self-addressed return envelope. A tracked US Postal Service option is preferred.

Fill in every field

The consulates are explicit about this: an incomplete application is not processed and not queried. It is returned to you, and the three-day clock starts again from the day the corrected file arrives. Leaving a box blank because it seems not to apply is the most common way to turn a three-day procedure into a three-week one.

What registration is, and what comes next

Registering the birth records the child in Pakistan's civil system. It is the foundation for what follows rather than the end of it: a NADRA card and then a passport are separate applications with their own requirements.

If the plan is a Pakistani passport for the child, the order matters. Registration first, then the NADRA card, then the passport, because the passport system reads its data from NADRA and cannot proceed without a record there.

Which office to send it to

The consulate covering where you live, under the jurisdiction set in September 2012. The boundaries are not intuitive: Wyoming and Kentucky go to New York, Pennsylvania to the Embassy in Washington, and Florida and Georgia to Houston.

Since this procedure is postal, the distance costs you postage rather than a day of driving. Sending it to the wrong office costs you the three-day turnaround twice.

Proof of the father's nationality

The requirement is specific and it is where most files come back. The consulates ask for the original and a copy of the father's CNIC, NICOP or Pakistani passport. A photocopy alone is not accepted, and an expired document should be checked with the office before you rely on it.

Children born in Pakistan

If the birth took place in Pakistan rather than the United States, this is not the procedure. That case runs through the Union Council birth certificate and NADRA's Child Registration Certificate, and it feeds into a NADRA card application rather than a consular registration.

Photographs

Two current passport-size photographs, front view, white background. For a newborn this is harder than it sounds, and studios that do passport work are used to it. A photograph taken at home against a wall is a common reason for a returned file.

Timing it against everything else

Registration is the first of three steps if the goal is a Pakistani passport for the child. Registration, then the NADRA card, then the passport, in that order, because each one reads from the record the previous one created.

The three days this takes is the fastest part of that chain by a wide margin. The NADRA card behind it runs from two to six weeks depending on the track, and the passport another two to four after that.

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