Passports - Australian, Canadian - any advice?

[Little bird]

My son is 4 months now. I hold Australian passport and my husband Canadian. I would like to apply a passport for my son now. Any advice please?

[nicolejoy]

You need to get citizenship first before you apply for a passport. My husband and I are both Australian and baby has an Australian passport. She's eligible for a HK passport but I don't want her to have one just now because neither hubby nor I have one. (he was born here, but renounced Chinese nationality, so he's a HK permanent resident still, but doesn't have the 3 stars on his ID card).

My opinion is, it's probably best to use the same country passport as the person who the bub is travelling with - usually the mother - just for simplicity. You could get both passports (dual citizenship) if Canada/Australia allow that, I dunno the rules there...

It's a fairly simple process though. For Australian passport, you need to go first to apply for citizenship by descent, then when that comes back, you can go straight to get the passport (but you have to wait to get the citizenship form first).

If you're a HK resident, you need to get some kind of right of abode sticker in the foreign passport, since they don't get ID cards until they're 11...

[Little bird]

thanks Nicolejoy. re abode sticker, i thought my baby's full HK birth certificate will do?

[Shenzhennifer]

If you want a Canadian one, you also have to apply for citizenship first. It takes 14 months. You can apply for a passport at the same time but you would need to renew it after a year; otherwise wait until you have the citizenship card to apply for a passport, which would be good for 5 years.

[adelaidejax]

nicolejoy
how long did it take to all up to apply/process babys citizenship and passport?

[karmah1]

We had to apply for an Australian Citizenship and Passport for our son before we left Hong Kong. The Citizenship certificate took 2 weeks, we picked that up and on the same day submitted the passport application which took just over 2 weeks. Before we left we had to get the right of abode sticker stamped in our sons passport at HK immigration, that took a couple of hours.

[adelaidejax]

hi karmah1, so we should allow the usual check in airport time plus extra couple of hours for baby to get the sticker at immigration as well.

[cesh]

I think the sticker is done at the immigration department isn't it? not the airport immigration.

Also - our daughter is eligible for a HK passport (for some random reason even though neither of us are from HK) and they said she will be given her own HK ID card when the passport is ready next week.

I'm pretty sure you can have dual Canadian / Australian citizneship, just have to apply for citizenship by descent at relevant High Commissions.