Chile Forum

Good Morning,

I am newly registered to the forums although I will admit I've been lurking around for the past few years
casually perusing topics. Because, on the internet you can be creepy like that.

Okay.

So, I was adopted from Chile in 1985 and raised in New York City by US citizens. I have always had
my original Chilean birth certificate and RUN number. Through a random act of serendipity I happened to come in
contact with a contact that had a contact with the ability to find my birthmother without fee or extreme effort.

Earlier this year, we found and contacted my said birthmother (she's lovely, but, not the topic of this post) and a letter exchange began.
What my family of origin wants most though more than letters is to meet me in person.
I am a graduate student in addition to working full-time, so, for obvious reasons I could not just jump on a plane right away and go running off to Chile. A plan was made for me to visit Chile for an extended visit this coming December.
During that letter exchange the question of dual citizenship was raised.

Enter the problems.

I have gleaned from the posts on this forum, as well as my encounters with chilenas in NY during my twentysomeodd years,
that dealing with government bureaucracy is sometimes less than ideal. This story is of course no exception.

I contacted the Chilean consulate in New York in May with a pdf of the documents I have, as well as a description of my situation.
My Chilean birth certificate, my amended NY Birth certificate, my name change/ adoption finalization document were all included.
I asked if the consulate could please look my documents over and confirm that dual citizenship could be processed from the documents I had.
The consulate said dual citizenship could be processed from the documents I had (yes, I have emails that actually say this!) and told me to
call the office to schedule an appointment. (I should have known this was going too smoothly!)
I called the Chilean consulate office for an appointment and one was scheduled for three months later on this previous Wednesday.

I went to the office this previous Wednesday with my documents (Chilean B-cert, NY amended B-cert, Adoption Finalization, Chilean adoption documents-- in both English and Spanish!)
I took a number, sat down, filled out the passport y carnet form, waited the requisite hours.

Finally I am called back by the secretary. She says there is no record of my American name, so "When you go to Chile give name a la Chilena and it be ok." She stamped the form and handed my file to the individual who was going to process it.

When he pulled up my record he was amazed that the last picture of me the government had was that of me as a small baby. (Obviously, I was not amazed given that the last time I had any dealings with the Chilean government I was a baby!) Anyway, at this point he said he was going to have to ask me some questions to verify my identity. We were laughing and poking fun at my baby picture, however what he said he said so loud all the office representatives began to gather around. Where upon one of the other office representatives grabbed my paperwork and said "No! NO! You don't want to do this this way! You're making her establish dual identities (insert office employee's name here)!" He carried my paperwork off to another room and shortly after called me to go with him.


In his office after some poking around in my file he concluded that the "second part of my adoption under old adoption law" had never been completed. So, while my adoption and name change may be legal in the US, only my Chilean name was legal in Chile. He said my passport could not be processed until the second part of my adoption paperwork and my name was changed in Chile. Mind you I find it pretty hilarious that at 26 I am discussing paperwork that happened a quarter of a century ago! (Then again, we teach history back hundreds of years and science back billions of years -- however I am not as important as either!)

Anyway, long story short, he wrote down for me an email to contact the embassy with as well as a contact with SENAME. Then, he told me to write to them and say that I "needed the second part of my adoption completed under the old adoption laws to make my new name legal so I could file for a passport".

Upon coming home, I of course emailed both the embassy and SENAME at the contact addresses he provided.

The embassies reply was to "come to Chile to try to handle it". Meaning no disrespect to the quality of that reply, if such business cannot be handled at a consulate during a multi-hour face to face appointment I am hard pressed to believe it will be handled any better during a trip where I will already be under considerable emotional stress.

SENAME did not reply. Although, obviously, I am aware in dealings with Chile there is something akin to time dilation. Ten o’clock means two. Two o’clock means five. It could take more than 24 hrs for them to reply. Especially considering current potential student protests/strikes.
During college I lived abroad in Costa Rica, I understand how time seemingly melts with heat. ;-P

Anyway, to put it in internet terms. The TL;DR version is: Can the "second part of my adoption paperwork to legalize my adopted name" be handled legally prior to my visit to facilitate my Chilean passport and Carnet? Also, what would "the second part of my adoption paperwork" entail?

In my, I guess, New Yorker ways I tried to press the administrative worker at the consulate for what exactly was missing and why the adoption finalization documents from the US were not considered legal in Chile.
But, he said "it just isn't" and that I was "making him nervous". He was really very nice and generally helpful with what I feel were the best legal intentions in mind.

But, in my typical New Yorker ways, internally I suppose I was having a hard time seeing it that way when I had confirmed with the consulate by email three months prior that there would be no "problems" upon my appointment!

Advice. Suggestions. Legal counsel. All welcome.

Many thanks if you actually made it to the end of that tome.

Advice:
Get Admin & his legal firm involved in Chile. While it might be something you could sort out yourself, it might take your entire holiday, and i'm sure that's not really the aim of your trip. Sounds like you can just use your US name and passport and there will be no connection that you were born in Chile. You'll have to pay the reciprocity fee though.

Comments:
The fact that your adoption is complete and legal in the US and is not complete in Chile sounds about right. Legal systems don't carry across from country to another. Marriage, for example, for a Chilean citizen. A Chilean could get married in the US, but as I understand it, unless s/he also goes through the legalisation system, or has another wedding in Chile, s/he are technically single in Chile. (Correct me if I am wrong here, foreros, but that's how I understand it)

In my experience, it's very rare that anyone in Chile responds to email, especially govt departments, and when they do, don't reply on the information being correct. A couple of months ago, after several email exchanges with a govt department in Santiago, my partner and I paid for his Mum to go to Ecuador and get some documents (proving that the university he went to there existed and was legal). Then we went to Santiago to get the copy of his legalised degree (yeah, he lost it..) and it turns out, surprise surprise, that we don't need those documents from Ecuador that they insisted he needed.

I find more success on the phone, but if I really want to get someone it needs to be in person. Even then, I generally try and ask 3 people the same question and see if they all give me the right answer.

Read some of the comments about consulates on this forum. They often know much less and have completely different rules than you come across in Chile.

Good luck.

Hey scrap the BS you just went through, when in Chile with Chilean Birth Certificate in Hand GO GET YOUR PASSPORT. As a loyal American you might find it repugnant to have a legal passport in your birth name, but millions from your country would LOVE to be in that situation, should you ever want to go live in Chile and not pay US taxes it would help

cobaltblue wrote:
SENAME did not reply... It could take more than 24 hrs for them to reply.

Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?

The other advice you have received is spot on, get someone down here to do the legwork for you, then arrive and tie up the loose ends. It really is a different story to try to get things done in person than via a consulate.

Yea, we deal with theses messes all the time. That is a new one, but we have dealt with various versions of it.

chilean consulates are idiots is the short answer.

You have a chilean birth certificate and a RUN/RUT number. Why are you not recognized as a citizen? Why are you unable to simply request a passport?

As for the name situation, assuming you want to fix it in chile, there are procedures in chile to deal with certifing that you have been "known as" for so many years and thus it is your legal name.

Call the numbers in my signature, and ask for attorney zandra valenzuela late next week (bit swamped this week). Zandra will be able to help sort out how to handle this.

How do you get a NY Birth Cert when you were not born there??

By chance we just dealt with a situation of someone adopted outside the country, that also had a name issue as an adult.

In that case, it was not that the adoption paperwork was not completed. It is was the adoption paperwork under the old law was simply an authorization issued by the Chilean government for a baby to be taken out of the country to be formally adopted in another country. There is a real chance the consulate did not understand the subtly under one of the old laws.

There also is a whole mess of adoptions, that once the kid left the country, the paperwork was simply never processed (very Chilean out of sight out of mind bureaucratic thing). There is also the issue that a lot of paperwork related to adoptions as a matter of policy was destroyed in relation to adoptions in Chile. small country catholic country, so people wanted to make sure that sealed records stay sealed, or no one would ever adopt. The fact you have any paperwork at all, is likely due to the fact you left the country.

In any case you got a birth certificate and a RUN number, and you are in the civil registry database. That pretty much makes you a dual citizen, unless there is something we are missing somewhere.

admin wrote:You have a chilean birth certificate and a RUN/RUT number. Why are you not recognized as a citizen? Why are you unable to simply request a passport?

As for the name situation, assuming you want to fix it in chile, there are procedures in chile to deal with certifing that you have been "known as" for so many years and thus it is your legal name.

Call the numbers in my signature, and ask for attorney zandra valenzuela late next week (bit swamped this week). Zandra will be able to help sort out how to handle this.

Not a damn clue. 2/3 consulate administrative workers were fine with it. 1/3 from the other side of the office apparently held the most sway!

NYC is under warning from Hurricane Irene. So, all my important papers are now stored in a waterproof box in my get the hell out of dodge bag but provided we're still an operational city at the end of next week I will definitely be in touch!

In the time between, while I still have electricity, I can email the documents I have, saved in pdf, if that would be useful. I know email is not secure but my information has already been sent all over the internet this week (not my idea!).

nwdiver wrote:How do you get a NY Birth Cert when you were not born there??

Not quite sure. But, my New York b-cert says that I was born in Chile, in the event you were curious. A snapshot with most of my info removed.


http://i.imgur.com/VJ5ir.jpg

rachelmarama wrote:Advice:
Get Admin & his legal firm involved in Chile. While it might be something you could sort out yourself, it might take your entire holiday, and i'm sure that's not really the aim of your trip. Sounds like you can just use your US name and passport and there will be no connection that you were born in Chile. You'll have to pay the reciprocity fee though.

A couple of months ago, after several email exchanges with a govt department in Santiago, my partner and I paid for his Mum to go to Ecuador and get some documents (proving that the university he went to there existed and was legal). Then we went to Santiago to get the copy of his legalised degree (yeah, he lost it..) and it turns out, surprise surprise, that we don't need those documents from Ecuador that they insisted he needed.

Thank you for your response. Yes, spending my whole trip sorting the issue is what I am concerned about if I left the issue standing. Actually, my US passport says I was born in Chile, curiosity of curiosities. So, there absolutely would be a connection. (I even attempted to use this as a bargaining chip with the consulate office "My US passport says my American name AND that I was born in Chile!"

&Your story reminds me that I should probably locate my diploma. If not now, definitely before moving.

admin wrote:By chance we just dealt with a situation of someone adopted outside the country, that also had a name issue as an adult.

In that case, it was not that the adoption paperwork was not completed. It is was the adoption paperwork under the old law was simply an authorization issued by the Chilean government for a baby to be taken out of the country to be formally adopted in another country. There is a real chance the consulate did not understand the subtly under one of the old laws.

There also is a whole mess of adoptions, that once the kid left the country, the paperwork was simply never processed (very Chilean out of sight out of mind bureaucratic thing). There is also the issue that a lot of paperwork related to adoptions as a matter of policy was destroyed in relation to adoptions in Chile. small country catholic country, so people wanted to make sure that sealed records stay sealed, or no one would ever adopt. The fact you have any paperwork at all, is likely due to the fact you left the country.

In any case you got a birth certificate and a RUN number, and you are in the civil registry database. That pretty much makes you a dual citizen, unless there is something we are missing somewhere.

^ Your first point is a point I also attempted to bring up. But, said person would not even read the paperwork. That papers if indeed I translated correctly says "xyz-B-mom has granted xyz-me irrevocably and totally to the care of xyz-american-couple, no visits are necessary although there should be communication once a year until the adoption is finalized." I do have an adoption finalization for America. I only have the document permitting my exit from the country and granting custody from Chile. It is very conceivable that if there was an additional step to be taken my adoptive parents simply forgot to take it (my adoptive father fell ill shortly after my adoption). Or, much as you say, a Chilean out of sight out of mind type phenomenon happened where the incomplete adoption was never followed up on or a completed adoption was simply never filed with the appropriate parties.

As a side note, prior to the recent debacle and my contact with my birthmother this year via a stroke of luck, I had contact with SENAME about the very issue of opening records. As in 2008 I did my undergraduate thesis on Transnational Adoption and was using my adoption search as a first person account to thread in the paper to make it less dry (or, as *cough* research padding). Chile definitely is a small Catholic country with interest in "washing dirty laundry at home/in private" so to speak and while that is the historical attitude -- with the exclusion of this most recent experience-- most of my interactions with SENAME re:records and the Carabineros have been pleasant and open. As was my initial contact with the consulate. Which is why the Wednesday experience came as a bit of a shock. Also as a side note, I highly recommend Nara Milanich's 2009 book "Children of Fate" for anyone interested for some odd reason in the history of Chile's orphans. Then again it's dry reading.

However, I do recognize that I am one of the lucky ones though who both has their correct birth information and had the necessary contacts to have found my birthmother. So, at least I am not totally unlucky! I will call next week to see how this can be solved. &Yes, no one is missing a thing re: everything being in order from the documents I have.

nwdiver wrote:. . . should you ever want to go live in Chile and not pay US taxes it would help ;)

Not quite as easy as that. You would need to renounce US citizenship as well.