After having a baby in Mexico, we needed to get the CRBA and US passport as soon as we could. Our baby could not cross the border back to the USA without either a visa (as a Mexican citizen), or a US passport (as a US citizen). Visas are pretty difficult to get, and are not a logical solution – I suspect anyone that tries this will be told to pursue US citizenship instead.

Since we are US citizens, our baby is entitled to US citizenship. The means of procuring that is via the Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA), which is essentially a US birth certificate for citizens born abroad. You can apply for the CRBA and US passport at the same time, and in certain situations they will issue an emergency passport. The consulate can print an emergency passport the same day.

All of this is information we knew. What we didn’t know is that the consular office in Puerto Vallarta is no longer processing CRBAs.

Okay, before we get into this, let me set the scene. We have a newborn who needs to be in our arms to sleep – including at night. We’re suffering from lack of sleep. We have a toddler who sleeps great at night and has boundless energy during the day and epic toddler meltdowns at random. We were also incredibly stressed out by the roadblocks we’d encountered trying to get the Acta de Nacimiento.

This was an unbelievably intense period of time, since we had no indication of how long the process would take, and we were essentially trapped in Mexico until we had a US passport in our hands. Welcome to our insane journey.

Day 0

We had a baby! Now that the baby is here, we are in a rush to get paperwork done. We have given ourselves 3 months to get the paperwork completed. We really want to have the freedom to fly back a month early, because once we get back to the US we have to make a cross-country road trip in our RV with two kids under the age of 2. Going home a month early means avoiding the summer heat for what already promises to be a tough trip.

Day 12

We cannot submit our CRBA application until we have the baby’s Mexican birth certificate, the Acta de Nacimiento. While we wait for that, Kyle is spearheading the CRBA and US passport process because the paperwork involved is significant. He started the in-depth research about a month ago, and when he went back to the website today it was completely different – the website now listed the process for an eCRBA. This is clearly meant to streamline the CRBA process but it appears we are going to be some of the first people to use the eCRBA, which makes us guinea pigs.

He also found out some fairly devastating information. Part of the reason we chose Puerto Vallarta is because the consular office here processes CRBA applications. Well, they used to. It seems covid changed that, and now everyone must travel to a consulate or the embassy in CDMX. Our nearest consulate is in Guadalajara. This is the third largest city in Mexico, and I cannot overstate how much I do not want to go there with two babies, stay overnight at a hotel, and spend the day neck-deep in bureaucracy. If there are any paperwork problems, we’ll have to repeat the entire trip.

Since we were already pushing maximum stress levels with the Acta de Nacimiento, we entered the five stages of grief, starting with denial: there’s no way we’re going to Guadalajara. They have to process it in Puerto Vallarta for us. We’ll find a way.

Day 14

Kyle has been trying every possible means of communication with the consulate, every single email address and phone number that he can find. The phone number all lead to the same phone tree recording, with no way to talk to a human. The email addresses all lead to the same auto-response, which says “it may take 3 business days to get back to you.” They never actually respond.

So we are facing this critically important process and it looks like we are not going to have access to any official help. How can we make sure we are doing everything correctly when no one will answer our questions? For instance, we know that we can either pick up the CRBA and US passport from the consulate when it is ready, or we can show up with a prepaid envelope to have it sent to us. But can we send it to the USA? Do we need to send it to a Mexican address? Can we have the passport sent to one location and the CRBA sent to another? How can we show up with a prepaid envelope, per the requirements, unless we know the answers to these questions?

We are insanely sleep deprived, and yet even when I lay in bed I can’t sleep now, due to stress. I am currently feeling some regrets about our decision to have a baby in Mexico.

Day 17

I have been digging into Facebook for any information about the CRBA and US passport timing, since no one at the consulate will respond to our questions.

One person said they waited 4 months to hear anything about an appointment, and then the consulate gave them 5 days notice to attend their appointment in Guadalajara. If they couldn’t make it to that appointment, the whole process would restart – potentially waiting another 4 months to get an appointment scheduled.

Day 18

An incredibly kind stranger on Facebook has been answering all of my questions very thoroughly. Since we have already scheduled our return trip to the US, we will probably qualify for an emergency appointment. We only have lodging in Mexico through that date, and we have flights booked.

She also let me know that you purchase your envelopes to mail the CRBA following the appointment, so we can sort that out after we have some answers. That’s one thing that the eCRBA checklist isn’t clear on: it sounds like you need to bring the prepaid envelope to your appointment.

Day 22

In what can only be described as a minor miracle, we got the Acta de Nacimiento today. Now that we have the Mexican birth certificate in hand, we can submit our application for the CRBA and US passport. This kicks off the next phase of paperwork.

Day 24

We got the Acta on a Friday, so we gave ourselves a little break. Today is Sunday and Kyle submitted the eCRBA. Towards the end of the process there is an online appointment scheduler. The website shows no available appointments for the next two years.

We’ve spent the last week or so putting together the paperwork for the CRBA and US passport. It’s pretty intense, and we also have one shot at this so we are definitely going above and beyond. Unfortunately, we only have what we brought with us to Mexico and what we have available on our laptops. Since we left our house in October, we completed most of our research after we were separated from our physical documents. We had no way of knowing this before talking to others who’ve been through the same process, but it would have been nice to have access to things like my college transcript, and rental agreements from our previous apartments.

Day 25

It’s been a full day since we submitted the eCRBA but every day feels very long. We decided to upgrade our CRBA application to an emergency appointment request via email.

Kyle managed to get through the phone tree to reach a real person, who let him know that Guadalajara is the busiest consulate.

He received an email in response to his emergency request. It stated that within 16 weeks we should have someone contact us to schedule an appointment. To me, it looked like a form response to our application submission, but because it was sent as a response to his emergency appointment request, we weren’t sure if it meant they were denying our emergency.

Day 27

Still no news. At this point we are doing the thing we always do, and that is uncover every possible option to get us to the place we want to be.

1. Wait for Guadalajara to get back to us. We hate this option, we are not passive people. We are terrible at waiting.
2. Mexico City (CDMX) is where the US Embassy is. We could submit another application (and pay another $100 fee?) to try to get an appointment there. It will probably be faster, since it’s the embassy, but we won’t know until we submit the application. At this point, are we asking if we should submit CRBA applications to every single consulate and see who gets back to us first?
3. We’ve heard (I think Kyle found out during his phone call) that there are appointments available in Nogales next month. The reason for that is because there are no airports in Nogales, but it is right on the US border. We’ve theorized that Kyle could fly to Phoenix, pick up our truck and camper, then drop the camper off in Puerto Peñasco. I fly (solo?!) with the babies – and all of our stuff?! – to Tijuana, Kyle picks us up in the truck, we all go get the camper and drive to Nogales. This is very much a nightmare solution, but if it’s the only way to get back to the US in the next two months, we will power through it.

Having heard nothing else from the consulate yet, we also started on a nuclear option: getting our senator involved. That was a pretty responsive process, but of course they had their own set of paperwork that they wanted us to submit before they would petition on our behalf. I need to start on that.

Day 28

My phone rang. I never answer unknown numbers, but today I did. It was the embassy in Mexico City (?!?!?), they have been trying to call Kyle’s phone to see if we’re available for a CRBA and US passport appointment six weeks from now. WHAT WHAT WHAT? I think this was in response to an email Kyle sent (Kyle has been tackling this process), but I had no idea how they even got my number. To me, it felt like a magic phone call telling me I’d won the lottery when I hadn’t even purchased a lotto ticket.

This was a huge relief. We can start planning again. We know that we can stay in our apartment, we can go to the appointment, and we can keep our original flights. Going home early isn’t an option anymore, but honestly that doesn’t even matter. We’re just happy things are moving forward.

Day 29

Believe it or not, the Guadalajara consulate emailed us today, they’ve scheduled us for an appointment on May 26 (four weeks away). Holy crap, Plan A (leaving Mexico a month early) is now back on the table. It’s a bit of a gamble – if we don’t get the CRBA in Guadalajara for some stupid paperwork reason, we’ll be pretty screwed. Also, we’ll probably fly back to Puerto Vallarta on May 27, which would give us just a couple days to get rid of stuff, completely clean the apartment, pack everything up and get to the airport for an international flight. Don’t forget we’re doing this all with two kids under 2, so at best we have ten minutes at a time for chores.

Also, it seems like it’s been WEEKS since we submitted our CRBA application but…it’s only been 4 days. We have absolutely no chill. In our defense, we’d heard absolutely nothing from the consulate all week, so we’ve basically been flailing in the dark, completely stonewalled.

Alright, I hope you’re still with me. We’re closing in on 2000 words and all I’ve managed to cover is getting our appointment scheduled. But it turns out that was the hard part. Next up: collating our paperwork and making copies, copies, copies of everything. Easy breezy!

Day 55

Our tiny family of four flew to Guadalajara. We stayed at Hotel Laffeyette, just a few blocks from the US consulate. Our appointment is for 7:30am tomorrow, so we only booked one night at the hotel, and we have flights back to Puerto Vallarta tomorrow afternoon.

You are not allowed to bring anything in to the consulate, no bags, purses, cell phones, food or drinks. Partially because we like to explore new areas, and partially because we will not have any GPS tomorrow, we took a walk to the consulate tonight so that we knew how to get there and how much time it will take tomorrow. It is just minutes away.

I have to say, after the Acta de Nacimiento and the Mexican passport, we were kind of excited about the fact that this bureaucratic errand is in our native language. At least if something goes wrong we’ll have the ability to argue our case.

Day 56

6:00am
I think it goes without saying, but our toddler in a new sleep environment, and all four of us sleeping in the same room…it was a rough night. None of us got any sleep. Then our alarms went off at the crack of dawn. There is a highly-rated coffee place just outside our hotel, but they don’t open until 7:30. We desperately drank as much Oxxo coffee as we could get into our bodies before we had to leave. We also shoveled as many snacks into the toddler as we could.

7:00am
At the consulate, we waited in line outside. We got up to the window, told them who we were and what time our appointment was, and they sent us through the metal detector into an open air waiting area. We thought we probably could have brought the umbrella stroller, but opted to leave it at the hotel just in case. This was stupid, other parents there had big strollers and baby food/drinks. That was my biggest question – we couldn’t bring food or water for our toddler? It turns out we could have and I felt like a fool for not bringing more.

I was debating bringing the carrier for Arrow, but I had a dream last night that I dropped him and I was pretty traumatized by that, so we risked bringing him in his Ergo carrier and that was not a problem.

7:30am
We played in the open air area until our names were called – it seems like we had the first appointment of the day. We waited longer indoors, then they called us up to the window. Kyle went up and let them know we also planned on applying for a passport. They asked him for payment, and he paid. Then we were back to waiting.

We had a divide-and-conquer approach to the day. Kyle had done all the groundwork for the CRBA and US passport, so he wore the baby in the carrier and handled the CRBA stuff. My sole job was to entertain a toddler who did not get enough to eat this morning. Kyle had snuck in some rice cakes, thankfully. There was a small activity center but we quickly got bored with that.

8:30am
They called us up for paperwork review. I basically showed my face and said “I’m the mom, I am present.” Then Kyle and the agent went through all our paperwork and copies. The CRBA checklist is clear about what documents are needed, and instructs you to have them in the correct order. The agent went through her checklist and made sure Kyle had adequate evidence for each item. She kept copies of most of documents.

CRBA Checklist:
CRBA Application fee (we paid online with when we submitted the application)
Courier Delivery fee (you pay this after you are approved)
Application Form DS-2029
Valid ID
Original Birth Certificate Issued by the Civil Registry (Acta de Nacimiento)
Mexican Secretary of Health Birth Certificate
Marriage Certificate
Proof of US Citizenship
Proof of Parenthood
Proof of Physical Presence in the USA

Those last two are the big ones. The checklist gives a list of documents that you can submit as proof. For proof of parenthood, we submitted photos of me pregnant and in the hospital with the baby following the birth, as well as photos of ultrasounds. We also had the itemized hospital bill, hospital bracelets for me and the baby, copies of lab tests and prescriptions. For evidence of our relationship prior to conception of the child, all we needed to show was our marriage license. Had we not been married we would have needed to show evidence that we were in the same location at the time of conception, although the consulate reserves the right to request a DNA test!

For proof of physical presence in the USA, we only needed to show evidence for one person since we’re both US citizens (otherwise, the citizen parent must show the proof). So Kyle had his college transcript, utility bills, the closing statement for our house, his social security statement, and more. Basically trying to establish length of residency.

The only hiccup was that she asked for documentation to show that we’ve lived in the US for five years (did not have to be consecutive). The website no longer lists this as a requirement, the current eCRBA checklist says to show proof that you’ve lived in the US. Fortunately we had a ton of paperwork along, so he managed to cobble together paperwork from five different years.

That was a long process, but they solved all the problems and approved the paperwork. Then we were back to waiting. Atlas was pretty much out of patience and hungry by then. The waiting room started filling up with people with babies and toddlers, which made it a chaotic space.

10:00am
They called us in for the interview portion. All four of us crammed in a tiny room, it was probably a smidge bigger than 3’x3’. Both kids were melting down, both of them were hungry. I signed a couple forms, then the agent conducting the interview told us we didn’t all need to be there for the whole interview. I took Atlas out and Kyle stayed for the interview. He was still wearing the baby.

Kyle said that it was a pretty casual conversation, she asked him things like “where did you go to high school? What city was that in?” and other similar things. A couple generic questions about his career, and a couple questions about where and when we got married. It wasn’t all verifiable information, but more of a gut check that we weren’t lying about being US citizens. Kyle described it as informal, but professional.

Finally the agent told him that the consulate has approved Arrow’s citizenship, and told him to come back at 3pm to pick up the passport.

“Uh, our flights leave at 3pm.”

After some back and forth, she told him to wait an hour and a half, then they’d call his name again. She made no promises that the passport would be ready. In fact, she said sometimes the system doesn’t register the passport approval right away.

When he came out of the interview, Kyle was ready to go over to the FedEx desk (which is located right inside the consulate) to prepay for shipping the CRBA to our home in the USA. However, both kids were desperate to be fed, so he handed the baby off to me and bought some mystery cookies from the vending machine. They ended up being rock-hard, so he tried another roll of the dice.

Seriously, for how many hungry toddlers must pass through here, how is there no toddler-friendly food in the vending machine?!

We’re back to waiting. Our kids are seriously sick of this waiting room – okay, so am I. But Arrow is now a US citizen!

11:00am
It really wasn’t much time at all before they called Arrow’s name. Back up at the paperwork review window, the woman handed me a purple emergency passport! I nearly cried.

56 days after birth, our family of four is legally allowed to enter the States.

Total cost: $710.58
$100 – CRBA
$135 – emergency US passport
$63.62 – FedEx the CRBA to our house in the states
$292.12 – flights to GDL (two seats and two lap children)
$80.94 – hotel in GDL
$21.43 – taxi to the hotel
$17.47 – uber to the airport

I think I also spent about $26 in copies, those long forms pricey to get copied, but we truly showed up with about 96 pages of paper copies. It’s not like we’d have our laptops or phones available if we needed any additional paperwork.

Next we went to find some street tacos and head back to the hotel for a little rest before our flight. What a day!

Now, about that Mexican passport…