Applying for SA Citizenship for Baby born in UK

Hey Pikkewyntjie,
How did you find the whole newborn from the UK to SA process? We are going to be doing the same thing next year and would love to find out what you did with regard to getting SA and UK passports for the baby, also whether baby can travel into Sa with a UK passport and then get an SA one whilst there?? It's difficult to find out this information!
Hope to hear from you soon!

We aren't due until next year so will not be applying until June 2013. We are planning to work with Breytenbachs to get my visa t they confirmed that they will not be able to help get our child's SA passport and we should deal with the high commission directly.


Breytenbachs Immigration Consultants Ltd
Third Floor · Cutlers Court  · 115 Houndsditch · LONDON · EC3A 7BR · UK
Tel: +44(0) 845 074 0514
Fax: +44 207 283 8565
[email protected]
www.bic-immigration.com

Hi Pete,

I just wanted to let you know that I applied through Breytenbach and I received my temporary visa in just 2 weeks.

The form and everything was actually quite straight forward and in hindsight it is probably something I could have done myself but I found it useful using Breytenbach as I could ask them lots of questions and I was reassured that the form was completed accurately. They also chase up the application for you so they must have internal contacts which is great.

It was ZAR5500 so with the current exchange rate you will get a good price in GBP.

For our son, it was a little more difficult, Breytenbach won't get involved in birth registration/first child passport applications. I think this is because these generally need to be done in person with the baby taken to the embassy.

As the passport can take some time - we actually applied for a temporary one as well - you can do this at the same time as the main application but you have to write a letter to say when you need it.

We applied for the temporary one separately (wish we had done it with the original application!) - just last week as we are travelling in 4 weeks and don't know if his proper passport will arrive in time - the great news was that because they had already seen everything else with the original application they processed the temporary passport on the same day.

A couple of other things to note:

1) You are supposed to register your baby within 30 days of birth at the London Embassy (although you can do it after this but have to say why you are registering their birth after 30 days).

2) The embassy are very particular about the photo for the passport - it is different to the UK requirements. Even if they are an infant they have to have their eyes open completely and to be able to see both ears so looking exactly straight at the camera - rather challenging with a 2 week old whoh can support there own head and you can't hold it in the photo! We used the passport photo shop in Charring Cross station underground. They take pictures for the embassy regularly and know the exact requirements.

3) You also have to make sure your marriage certificate has been certified (Apostille - http://www.apostille.org.uk/) not just an original certificate or original copy. This was £65 and takes a couple of working days.

4)make sure you have a prepaid envelope for them to send back the SA birth certificate. You have to pick up the passport from the embassy.

5) make sure you take exact cash to pay.

6) expect to be at the embassy for several hours - You also need to arrive to queue at about 08:00 - otherwise you will be in the queue for some time, before joining the next queue!

7) The first queue is purely to see why you are there and to give you the forms if you haven't already got them. Its best to print them and complete them before you go (and take all your document copies) as they will check you have everything in order before giving you a number for the second queue in which they check and confirm your application. Then you join another queue to pay.

Hope this is helpful!

Sorry one other thing.

I guess the baby could go on the UK passport but he would then have a tourist visa and I would expect you would need a return flight for him. Also if it runs out before you finish registering him, he would technically be in the country illegally (I would have thought).

If you apply before you leave and the passport isn't ready you can get the temporary passport as well and then when they tell you the actual passport is ready (and you are in SA) you just ask them to send it to your local government office in whichever city you are in).

I hope that helps.