Sorry for the tag I think that could be wrong.
Please forgive my ignorance here. I know nothing on the subject.
My toddler has a Japanese passport.
I’m British and my wife is Japanese.
From what I gather, he’s entitled to a British passport.
For people in a situation like mine with a child of half nationality born in Japan, did you get both passports? Why would I want a British passport for him besides for the obvious reason of registering him as a citizen if we need to live there. What did you do?
I know on japanlife we like to fight but for this one I’d love to hear actual serious answers as I find this topic interesting.
Thank you
30 comments
our son was born 3 months ago and im german and my wife is japanese. to get the german passport we would have to travel to tokyo from sapporo. it wouldnt really bring him any advantage to have one, apart from us having to pay every x years to have it renewed.
if he decides to want to live in europe for an extended time or study there or go to highschool in germany then we will get him one but before that happens i dont really see any upside to it. its a hassle, it costs money and has no benefit imo.
If your child has citizenship in the UK then he needs a British passport to travel to and from.
I thought I only needed a Japanese passport for my kids who are both Japanese and Aus but Aus authorities took em aside when I landed in Aus and explained that if they have an Aussie citizenship then they have to be traveling on an Aussie passport.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
Practical reasons for or against aside, a passport is an important symbolic document, and I want my child to understand from a young age that he belongs to more places than just Japan.
It’s not super necessary. For me I got one for my son and when I visited my home country without my wife it was easier because I was able to go with him through the returning nationals line instead of the foreign visitors line.
But thus far it hasn’t been of use often.
Got the UK passport.
It’s easy if you are British by birth, a bit more complicated if not.
Yes, because Canada requires its citizens to travel to Canada on their Canadian passports.
From what I understand, as a Canadian citizen he is not legally eligible for the tourist waiver he would get if we presented his Japanese passport. As such he needs to present a Canadian passport and be allowed in as a citizen.
I don’t know how it works for the UK but I imagine many countries have similar rules.
Of course, many people ignore these rules or just don’t know about them and never get flagged, but it only takes one immigration control officer with a stick up their ass to make your life difficult.
Two different things here:
1- the actual passport
May or may not be necessary
2- the citizenship
Very, *very* necessary. If you have not told your embassy yet that you’ve gone and reproduced, please do that ASAP. Your kid is entitled to that citizenship, but in order to get it they have to know that he exists.
Aside from all the travel reasons others have mentioned, as an American I have to file US taxes so having the citizenship / SSN allows me to claim them as a dependent.
I guess other than that, it was really just a no-brainer for me. I want my kid to feel ties to both countries/cultures and having a passport to prove it only helps reinforce that.
I reported my sons’ births straight away to the US Embassy, got their passports and social security cards before they were six months old. Why not? What if you get divorced in a year? What if you die next week in car accident? What if there is a huge natural disaster and your home country offers assistance? Or more realistically, as others have pointed out, most countries get rather peeved when their citizens enter on a different passport. I simply can’t see any reason not to, except, “it’s a pain in the arse”.
Yes, I got it for my son not long after he was born. Trying to take a good photo that complied with the passport standards was a memorable experience.
The US embassy pretty much recommends getting the passport, consular birth certificate and SSN at the same time. If you need to travel – and we did when he was 6 months old – you are supposed to enter with your passport of citizenship and anyway, I just wanted him to have both.
Definitely get the UK passport. You’ll be doing a huge disservice to him in the future by not doing so. Passport means birth is registered, citizenship is acquired, he will be free later on to live in the UK as he pleases. Plus in exceptional circumstances/emergency it can come in handy, eg during the pandemic there were restrictions on travel based on nationality. Just do the paperwork and get it over with.
Yes they have 3 in fact including Japan
Yes! After registering their births with the respective countries, the next step was getting both passports. Getting the Japanese ones were quite simple; the other country a bit more tedious.
In addition to the various reasons already noted, it’ll be handy if/when they want to attend a university abroad in their other country, as it’s much easier to enter on a passport vs needing a visa.
Yep. Got both
Yes you should get both passports.
Go to your embassy or consulate to find out how to apply.
The only disadvantages of having multiple are…
– The fees associated with the application
– if your country has mandatory military service
– maybe taxes??
Can’t think of any more.
Once a kid becomes an adult it can become more complicated to document their citizenship.
Not British, but I have dual citizenship for US and a different country. Please make you and your child’s life easier and get the passport now. My mom was a dual citizen but didn’t know because my grandparents never bothered to get her a passport. Now as an adult, she had to get her passport and also report my birth before I was able to get my passport. This process is way more complicated as an adult vs a kid.
Without the passport, I wasn’t able to visit my family abroad without being subjected to US visa limits. I’m not sure what the Japan-UK agreement is, but without a UK passport he may be subject to whatever Japan’s visa travel agreements are even though he’s technically citizen.
Yes. My son has a Japanese and a British passport. Obviously as others have said, he is entitled to British citizenship so we need his passport when we go home for a visit this year.
It was a bit of a pain in the arse to get his passport tbh. They asked for SO many extra documents, so it took around 6 months to finally receive it.
Similar situation here: British, married with 2 kids. We never applied for the UK passport for them, but more out of laziness/inaction that anything else. I keep thinking I should do it for the older one before he gets to 21, but that’s not based on any research, just a vague feeling that I should do it before then. (I know, I’m pretty disorganized!)
Yes. Our two boys inherited my British citizenship, and have their own passports. They obviously have Japanese passports too.
Mostly for:
1. Travel. Not that that’s exactly affordable anymore.
1. If they ever wanted to study/work in the old country.
1. In the unlikely event of total war, it at least offers a theoretical escape route for them.
1. Nobody knows what else may turn up in the future, so it’s good to have options.
Yes, definitely. I’m in the process of getting my son his Canadian passport, but it’s taking ages. I applied for a certificate of citizenship, which he needs to apply for a Canadian passport abroad. There’s a 15 month backlog for the certificate. The process is hella mendokisai, but it’s important and my son’s birthright, so here we are.
!!!!! Learned it the hard way.
It’s okay to make a passport of your home country but dont only bring that passport when you travel abroad with your childs, bring their Japanese passport as well as a proof of residency. Or at least bring with you a proof they are legally allowed to live in Japan.
No, because my situation is complicated, lol. I’m “from” NZ, but was born in the UK. My kids can’t inherit my NZ citizenship, but they can inherit the UK one – only I haven’t lived there since I was 2, and have only visited twice as an adult on MZ passport. I haven’t held a British passport since we emigrated, so it seemed slightly meaningless to register as UK citizen. I’d rather apply for NZ citizenship for them at some stage, but passports are expensive and I can’t really afford the whole process right now.
If you are British born, British citizen from birth then your child is a British citizen by descent (there’s a few other situations that you can check via gov.uk). Note that you don’t need to apply or register, it’s not that they are eligible to apply, it’s that your child *is* already British from birth (so no issues with acquiring a nationality in terms of Japanese dual-nationality)
Although you don’t need to register anything, you might find it useful to apply for a uk birth registration and/or a uk passport.
Uk birth registration generates a record at the GRO and gives a certificate that looks like a birth certificate and in most cases can act as a birth certificate. If you there is a chance of living in the uk in future, this would be helpful as Japanese documentation is annoying, with no birth certificate available and all in Japanese.
For the passport, a uk passport offers no advantage over Japanese, however British citizens are supposed to enter uk under most conditions with a British passport and you may be technically entering uk illegally under visa waiver if you are British (it is very very unlikely this would ever be found out, unless you needed consular assistance in uk).
Other considerations with one of these applications- uk can register with the uk father’s surname even if the Japanese mother and the child have a difference Japanese surname (with a uk passport, that surname can then be added to their Japanese passport in brackets). This might be very helpful if you are travelling without the mother of you done share a surname. You can also add middle names if you like. I think it is easier to get the birth registration first, that needs all the Japanese docs as well as your uk stuff, and the office in the uk understand all the requirements. Then you can apply for a uk passport with just the certificate of birth registration.
by getting my child US citizenship, i enslaved them to a life of tax servitude for shitty wars around the world.
Tried it for German citizenship but it was a huge hassle so I gave up on it.
No idea when I might try again.
I went through a lot of comments to make sure I didn’t repeat what anyone else said.
Yes, get it with their citizenship.
For me it was very necessary. I, a us citizen, needed to take care of some forms while I was in the states but my kids and wife stayed here. It related to their social security and life insurance from their grandpa, my dad. The passport was the proof of ID that made everything much smoother.
If you ever need to do something for them while visiting your home country, it is a life saver.
This is in addition to what everyone else has said
I’m American, husband is Japanese. He would have applied for passports the day our kids were born if he could. Pretty much two to three weeks after we got home we went to register their birth and apply for the American passports, he also applied for the Japanese ones.
Reasons: easier to establish citizenship if we did it right away. Citizenship. For ease of travel and not having to worry about if it will come in time.
But here is the big one in case of emergency. If something happens we have it. We don’t have to scramble to prove anything. In fact we live in Tokyo and my husband decided after the 3/11 earthquake to send me and our almost two year old the the states to stay with my parents. My Japanese wasn’t great and he was unhappy with the lack of information coming out about what was going on. And also worried that if something did happen how I would be able to gain the information.
Having a passport to us is a necessity.
Yes, because he needs to enter the US as a citizen on his US passport. He has his Japanese passport so he can return to Japan. I’m sure we could probably get away with only having one but don’t want to have to deal with immigration more than I have to.
I registered my son’s birth with GRO first so that his middle name could be officially registered. Then we got his British passport with his full 3 names. Then we got his Japanese passport, and all three names appear there too so that the names match.
yes my daughter has both us and jp passports