Certificate of Citizenship

When we arrived with Emily in San Franciso the morning of December 8, we entered an unusual line at passport control - the line for new immigrants! At the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, we received Emily's visa packet that included all of the documents we needed for Emily's entry into the U.S. So in the new immigrant line, we handed over the documents to the border control agent, who reviewed the documents to be sure everything was in order, then stamped Emily's visa in her passport that allowed her to enter the country... as a full United State citizen.

International adoptees don't always become U.S. citizens automatically. For example, if only one parent travels to adopt a child, the child receives a visa to enter the United States, but the family must apply for citizenship upon returning to the U.S. Since we both traveled to China to bring Emily home, and since we completed all of the paperwork correctly for both Chinese and American governments, Emily became a citizen upon passing through our first port of entry into the country -- in our case, San Francisco.

But it doesn't really feel official. Emily retains her Chinese passport with the stamped entry visa, and we have little else to prove that she's a citizen. That is, until this week, when we received Emily's official Certificate of United States Citizenship. As with Sydney, it took about a month and half (well, almost two months this time) to receive this certificate. And with this certificate, we now have documented proof that she's American, not Chinese (by citizenship, any). Now we can apply for a Social Security card for Emily, and now we can apply for an American passport. We can't do these at the same time, however, because each agency of the government works independent of the other and requires that we submit original documents. Submitting the originals of her adoption certificate and her citizenship certificate is always hard - these documents are very hard to replace, but we have no choice but to submit and trust the government agencies to keep those documents safe. (And, to their credit, the agencies did just that with Sydney's paperwork, so we'll expect the same of Emily's documents.)

Item one on the post-adoption checklist: COMPLETE. Item two: apply for Social Security card. That's our next paperwork adventure.