If you thought that trying to find consensus on children’s names with an Eastern European woman was your only worry, you are mistaken. Most countries of the Former Soviet Union are famous for their bureaucracy, so be prepared to deal with it when you and your Russian or Eastern European woman have a child.
If your wife is from Belarus and has Belarusian citizenship (even if she already has permanent residence in the US or even if she is a US citizen), your child, no matter what nationality you are and where the child was born, gets Belarusian citizenship. Belarus is not against your child having another citizenship along with Belarusian, but their laws make it very clear that they want to increase the population of their country.
This law became active in 2006 and since then all children who were born in the US, but have at least one Belarusian parent have been denied visas to Belarus, because Belarus treats them as Belarusians and therefore forces them to either apply for Belarusian passports or deny citizenship, both of which can be done only in Belarus.
This can be very inconvenient if you are only planning to stay in Belarus for less then 2 weeks, because getting a passport will take you at least 2 weeks and denying citizenship can take up to a month.
I know a family who was not aware of the law changes and who applied for Belarusian visas for their child 3 weeks before their flight. The visa application was denied and they had to change the dates of their flight in order to put all of their documents together.
If you are in a similar situation, your wife will have to get a certificate of return to Belarus for your child and then depending on whether you are going to be denying your child’s Belarusian citizenship or not, you will have to prepare a number of certain documents with apostilles.
You will need:
* your marriage certificate with apostille
* your child’s birth certificate with apostille
* if you are not travelling then you will either need a notarized and apostilled paper stating that you are not against your child residing under his/her mother’s address (you need this to get Belarusian passport) or that you are not against your child denying their Belarusian citizenship.
An important note: You should NOT translate any documents in the US. Belarussians trust only their own translators, so save yourself the money and headache. An acquaintance of mine brought translated documents to Belarus (done by a certified American translator) and they were not accepted. She ended up staying in Belarus for over 2 months waiting until her husband could send her apostilled originals of her documents.
In Belarus and Russia there is a term called “propiska” which means that you have to be permanently registered at a certain address in Belarus or if you are not, you have to be registered in the Belarusian embassy located in the country you are residing. The process of signing out of your apartment/house in Belarus and registering in another country is very painful, long and costly (getting rid of Belarusian citizenship for an adult is almost unrealistic), so many people avoid it. However, if your wife was brave enough to do it, then you can either apply for Belarusian passport or deny your child’s citizenship in the Belarusian consulate or Belarusian embassy. Still, the process takes time, so if you want to travel, do all these in advance.
Russian laws are a little different. The child gets Russian citizenship only if both parents are Russian citizens (regardless whether or not both parents have American citizenships as well). If one parent is Russian and another one is American, you can either deny or accept Russian citizenship for your child, but he or she does not get it automatically. Still, there might be issues in getting Russian visa in your child’s American passport. Even though the information was not specified on the Russian embassy website, many people have been having problems. Last year a friend of mine got denied a visa for her son and asked to accept or deny Russian citizenship before travelling.
Each country has its own regulations and you will need to consult the embassy to find out what exactly needs to be done. Just remember: laws in Eastern European countries are far from perfect and it often is used not to protect its citizens but to make their life more complicated, to control its citizens and collect multiple fees (some FSU countries could probably sue me for such statement). If you want to travel with your children, don’t buy tickets or take time off work until you know which documents you need and know exactly how long it may take you to collect them.
