Citizenship cards received
Oct. 10th | Posted by Nicky
12 comments
Ok, so this is a little bit of a complaint post.
How stupid is this… we don’t actually get any proof of citizenship when the girls get their facilitation visas from Nairobi. So when you get home, you have to fill out some more paperwork and send it away. But because the girls have really odd legal names (the custom in Ethiopia is to name kids after their father, ie: Dad is John Melvin Smith, then Kid will be Lisa John Melvin,) we have to get their names legally changed. Because right now their citizenship cards have their old names: Sugar Jrock and Spice Jrock. (A little web joke there.) But here’s the rub: $164 dollars, thank you very much, for the legal name change, plus another $30-60 to have documents certified. THEN, we have to reapply for new citizenship cards (because they won’t have birth certs or anything else to carry around with them) which is another $150, plus an additional $60-80 in doc certs. Nice. You just think you are done with all the legal costs when you get home. Nopers.
But hats off to BC Medical. Their Care Cards were issued in a week and have their new legal names – no questions asked. Hurrah!
Oh, I hear you!!! It’s so ridiculous. We were lucky – our BC office certified the copies for us. Worth a shot to ask if your’s will. All we needed was the originals and they copied them.
Then, of course, there’s PASSPORTS. The fun continues…
Wish we could catch up with you guys but our weeks pretty full with family/memorial service type stuff.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I hear ya. It sucks.
Really only a week for care cards? Dare I dream?? We arrived home a week ago today and I applied for a care card for my baby girl on Monday of last week… Could a care card arrive this week? i think I would do back flips…. I was told a citizenship card might take a year???? But I do have a temporary passport that I will be sending in this week to exchange for a permanant one.. I figure I have killed 3 forrests of trees at this point with all this paperwork, and yet, she is worth it. Glad you are all home safe and the girls are settling in to their new life
Robyn
Hello, [Nicky]! It has been awhile since our meeting at the Weygoss.
I wanted to let you know that I went to have a passport issued for our daughter and was blessed with a staff person who was an immigrant, now a Canadian citizen by marriage. She was extremely helpful and informed me that we do NOT need to change our daughter’s crazy Ethiopian mixture on her citizenship card as long as every time we go to have a legal document completed (health card, new passport, etc.) we can provide proof of the legal name change along with the citizenship card. She suggested that we not change her passport to her new name until it expires, and to simply always present the couple of documents (new birth certificate and court adoption certificate) that will be necessary to face each and every legal document we require from here on in (as well as to leave the country at any point!). Hpe this helps save a few pennies! BTW, one question for you – I thought you had to be home a year to apply for a legal name change? Would it be different in Ontario?
Glad to see all is going well with you guys and the girls!
At least you have your Cit cards, we are still waiting for our first cit cards (since July) so we can start the name change process and all the rest of the paperwork.
You can actually get new citizenship cards?? I was sure i read on our paperwork that we would not be allowed to apply for new cards after these are issued (but sounded like we could’ve done a legal name change first and send in all the supporting documents). Did you go PRV? We went citizenship, but since IA went under before our post-court documents were all done we had to do the part 2 paperwork ourselves (with the special cit. pictures, etc.). I finally mailed the stack of paperwork for citizenship cards today.
We’re still waiting for health cards, although we were told that we would be covered from the day we arrived home.
karen H
Hi Tracy – yes it is different from province to province – but that’s a good tip with the to cards!!
Thanks!
Hi Nicky, I have a question for you. What did you have to send in as documents? I have read through the form and they are asking for lots of things that I simply dont have.. Robyn
Hi Robyn – you actually don’t have to fill out the big form – it’s a one pager instead that doesn’t require any backup docs. (I’m assuming that you did the cit route in ET and now just have to get your cert.) Took a couple of goes on the phone before I found that out, let me tell you!
Anyway, here’s the form…
http://www.ci.gc.ca/english/pdf/kits/citizen/CIT0480E.pdf
Plus don’t pay any more money. We did – but they refunded us the $150 within a few weeks. You’ve already paid during the rest of your stuff.
Thanks Nicky, You Rock! You have saved me a ton of time and stress… Trying to navigate all the paperwork is like being lost in a maze. Thanks again, I will get the form sent off tomorrow.
Robyn
Sorry Nicy, one more question… Did you have to send photos too? If so I am assuming 2?
Oops, never mind, it says on the form… Thanks again Nicky
Robyn