If you’re adopted internationally into the United States, BY adoption LAWS you’re legally a citizen, but you still have to apply for documentation and if it’s not done by the age of 18 you have to pay over $500 and get a judge to reopen your adoption case.
Even More Fun Fact: No one actually tells adoptive families, this so many find out after they’re 18 when their kid needs to get a passport, wants to apply for financial aid, get certain jobs, vote or some other shit that requires proof of citizenship and now it’s too late because they’re 18 or over.
AND EVEN MORE FUN FACT! You can sometimes even be deported because you can be considered foreign-born, non-citizens!
Oh and they won’t accept adoption papers or a birth certificate as proof.
Do it now! Seriously. Even if you think you are safe. Do it.
Many people are finding that even a birth certificate is not valid proof anymore. Texas birth certificates are notorious. So notorious that I have 3 friends who can’t use them to get passports! Don’t think everything is hunky dory. You must nail down your citizenship.
Plus the cost for your citizenship certificate is almost doubling this fall.
SIGNAL BOOST.
Some Naturalization/Citizenship Certificate tips from me, the person who front-end processes these forms for half the country: the passport people are absolute garbage at sending your Naturalization Certificate back to you. Unfortunately, they also require it for you to get a passport. If you don’t get it back, whine at them about it and they will probably cover the cost of the replacement.
Also! It takes up to 12 months to get a replacement certificate. If you urgently need your Natz Cert to visit your dying relative in another country, the word you want to use is ‘Expedite’. Not ‘ASAP’. Not ‘rush’. Expedite. Write a letter explaining why you need it expedited, if you do. Otherwise the USCIS data-entry grunts (me!) aren’t allowed to throw it into the expedite line and it gets relegated to the Backlog Crypts.
Also! You need to get a new Naturalization Certificate if your name and/or gender legally changes, because a lot of places want your proof of citizenship for things like Social Security and student loans and Medicaid/EBT/welfare benefits and drivers’ licenses.
ALSO ALSO both the N600 ($600) that you use to apply for your Naturalization Certificate in the first place and N565 ($345) that you use to apply for a replacement certificate are eligible for FEE WAIVERS. It’s called an I912. Learn it, love it, use it.
Please for your sake make sure you are using the current version of the form. The most common reason I have to reject an N565 is because someone sent me something that expired in 2013. The current one is seven pages long. Please send the government all seven of them.
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