Yep. As of right now, Liam does not exist in any sort of legal status. The only current information about Liam is a sheet of paper stating that Beth Rhodes gave birth to him on June 9. He has no name, and I'm not mentioned in anything.
But tomorrow, everything will change.
In order to get Liam's birth certificate, tomorrow we will have to go to the записи актов
гражданского состояния, or ЗАГС (ZAGS), the civil registry of Russia. We most not only bring our passports but also our marriage certificate, and the previously mentioned paper we received from the hospital. We still are not sure yet if we need to bring Liam, but we hope to find out tomorrow before leaving. Our best guess is it's going to be a long day.
And we do all this to receive Liam's Russian birth certificate-- only then can we go to the American Embassy and get his American citizenship worked out. Right now we're looking into dual citizenship. We've heard both that he will and won't be able to, so we'll hopefully find out a definite answer tomorrow. But how cool would it be if he could have a dual?
We'll let you know how things go!
Interesting that someone suggested he could have dual citizenship. Our daughter was born here 5 years ago and we have never been told such a thing. In fact we have been told the father (regardless of mother) must be Russian in order for kids to have citizenship. We know a family with Russian mother/ Moldovian father who have been working hard to have their kids declared citizens. If you find out something different, I would be interested to hear. Also, if you plan to live in Russia in the future, you might reconsider even wanting him to be a citizen due to the compulsory draft.
ReplyDeleteIn hindsight I think that everyone who said we could have dual citizenship just didn't know what they were talking about :-). Everything we've seen officially points to us not being able to.
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