Pregnant and leaving China soon, CR1 or B2?

[Avs81]

Hi All,

 

Before I start, I wanted to thank everyone again for your help over the years. This will be my 6th year in China and I will be leaving soon （next August 2018), your site/members have been very helpful when I needed it. I just had a few questions regarding how my wife and I should proceed before heading back.

 

- my wife has her green card but we applied for the reentry permit for several years until recently when we allowed it to expire. This means if we go back anytime to the states, they will cut up her card and send her back.

- at this moment since we are only 13 weeks into the pregnancy and my wife is able to travel, what process would benefit her more? I was considering the B-2 visa to get into the states then apply for her green card again...but she was considering the CR1 visa which I am not very clear how that works, etc...

- our child should be born around Feb/March next year after that I believe from reading the forums here that he/she would be an automatic Chinese citizen since my wife is Chinese and we are in China. After my wife's visa is worked out, I thought we need to visit the Shanghai consulate and register our child...is there a general process for this?

 

Sorry I know this covers many topics, so thank you all in advance for helping on this.

 

Bill

[Randy W]

You will need to file an I-407 to have her abandon her green card - they cannot issue another visa until she does. At the same time, you can submit an I-130 at the Guangzhou consulate, which will allow her to apply for an IR-1 visa. It seems like the timing would be best if you did this during the first six months of next year.

 

You can get an American passport for the child through the Shanghai consulate. Take that to your wife's PSB to get an exit visa. Part of that procedure includes renouncing the child's Chinese citizenship. The exit visa is necessary, since there will be no entry stamps in the passport.

 

For a short while, they were refusing to issue exit visa to Chinese citizens born of a foreign parent. If that happens, you would need to get a Chinese passport for the child, and then go to the consulate to get what is known as a "pro-forma" visa - a B-2 visa issued to an American citizen who is refused an exit visa. It is very unlikely that this will happen.

[Randy W]

These are U.S. Dept. of State links, with links to the consulate information

 

Report Birth Abroad

 

 

Birth

 

 

 

Passports

[dnoblett]

Note if you have been married for more than 2 years the visa will be IR-1 not CR-1. IR-1 results in a 10 year no-conditions green-card.

[Randy W]

You will need to file an I-407 to have her abandon her green card - they cannot issue another visa until she does. At the same time, you can submit an I-130 at the Guangzhou consulate, which will allow her to apply for an IR-1 visa. It seems like the timing would be best if you did this during the first six months of next year.

 

You can get an American passport for the child through the Shanghai consulate. Take that to your wife's PSB to get an exit visa. Part of that procedure includes renouncing the child's Chinese citizenship. The exit visa is necessary, since there will be no entry stamps in the passport.

 

For a short while, they were refusing to issue exit visa to Chinese citizens born of a foreign parent. If that happens, you would need to get a Chinese passport for the child, and then go to the consulate to get what is known as a "pro-forma" visa - a B-2 visa issued to an American citizen who is refused an exit visa. It is very unlikely that this will happen.

 

 

One more hoop to jump through with the baby is when you apply for a visa to return to China. Make sure you have the exit visa and the citizenship renunciation paperwork to show them at the Chinese consulate in the U.S. They WILL notice that the place of birth is in China, and that this will be the first Chinese visa.