Chile Forum

I will try to make this short and to the point.

I am Canadian and my wife is Chilean and we just had our first child. He was born in here in Canada and we need to know that is the simplest way to register him in Chile so he has dual citizenship? We check the website for the Chilean embassy in Ottawa but it says you have to appear in person and you need to get everything legalized and translated. Just wondering if we should wait till her are in Chile next time and take care of it there (my wife is registered with the Chilean government as a translator so it should simplify things if we do it in Chile).

Also what is the policy on the Chilean Reciprocity Fee for infants traveling on a Canadian passport? If he goes through customs with his mom with his Canadian passport will he be exempt, will the rate be reduced or is it still full price?

The only thing that should need legalization is a copy of the birth certificate, assuming mom is registered in the civil registry.

Honestly, for the hassle and delay you can expect for going through the Chilean consulates (as most things involving them), it is just easier to legalize the birth certificate and next time you are in the country go to the civil registry.

admin wrote:Honestly, for the hassle and delay you can expect for going through the Chilean consulates (as most things involving them), it is just easier to legalize the birth certificate and next time you are in the country go to the civil registry.

That was my line of thinking as well. So we will just wait till next next October/November and get it done when we are there for our yearly visit.

So my kid will be getting his Canadian passport in a couple weeks and we are planning on going to Chile in October.

Who has to legalize his birth certificate? Does it have to be someone with connections to Chile? The Canadian embassy will legalize documents for Canadians in Chile, will that work? Or I have a friend here in Canada that is a lawyer and can legalize it for me at no charge.

On a slightly different and more morbid note, what happens if I die while we are living in Canada? We were married in Chile, my wife is Chilean and my son is Canadian-Chilean but we live in Canada. Would a will even be worth our time as Chilean inheritance laws are pretty clean cut and over rule any “Will” that is in written in Chile. Or would the laws of the country of habitual residence be the ones we have to follow regarding inheritance?

You have to legalise his Canadian birth certificate at the Chilean consulate/embassy in Canada. (In layman's terms (as it was explained to me!), the Chilean authorities here don't know what a real/valid Canadian birth certificate looks like, so they rely on their colleagues who are based in Canada to view it and legalise it, as they deal with Canadians all the time and know what it should look like. This goes pretty much for any of your Canadian documents, university degrees, marriage certificates etc.)

You will then have to have it translated (we did that here in Santiago) and then more red tape (legalised, notarised etc) before you get to apply for your child to be a Chilean citizen. It is a long winded process, but as with most bureaucracy, the outcome is pretty predictable for those with the stamina to push through. Once you have all your paperwork in order, it's quick and easy, well, it was for us anyway.

Interestingly though, they will be more interested in the birth certificate of your child's Chilean grandparents, than his mother's, as ancestry is awarded by grandparents. We had my in-law' birth certificates issues for 600 pesos or so and it was issued on the spot.

As far as I experienced, your child will have to pay the reciprocal fee on arrival in Chile, as he is travelling on a Canadian passport, regardless of what passport his parents are travelling on. (I am exempt as I'm South African, but my daughter entered originally on Australian passport and had to pay)

Talk to the embassy in Ottawa not the consulate in Vancouver, it was very good, now not so much. If you use your lawyer friend as a notary you will need a certificate dated the same day from the law society showing he is a member in good standing when he signed it. Also they may ask for the long form birth cert not the little card. Get the birth cert notarized here as most will not touch it in Chile, as pointed out they don’t know it’s legal.

I was born in the Yukon Territory, the territories were not recognized as part of Canada by the Chilean Government in Chile (a number of years ago when I had to product a birth cert for a document), it had to be pointed out to them by the Chilean Embassy in Canada that the 10 Provinces they had listed only make up part of Canada. They really only had the Provinces listed if you weren’t born in one of them you weren’t born in Canada I wonder if Nunavut has been listed probably not.