I am a US citizen by birth and have a Certificate for “Report for Birth Abroad”. I have never been to the US so I don’t really have a SSN or anything like that. I have applied for the passport but according the estimates of my country’s embassy, I will recieve it around Nov1-10 (a little beyond the early deadline)
What will the US universities demand as proof, if any, that I am a US citizen? Will the passport suffice? Do they ask for proof immediately or only after you are accepted? I’ll be applying for financial aid as well.
I should note that I am not in the US currently, and have never really been there. Would I need an SSN? I don’t think the unis are going to accept scanned copies of my passport
Are your parents US citizens? If so, have they filed US tax returns with you as a dependent? They should have an SSN for you if that is the case. If they make more than about 20K per year, I think they are supposed to be filing whether they are living in the U.S. or not (although may not have you as a dependent for some reason).
Ask your parents to dig through their files again. You should have received your social security number at about the same time as you received the certificate for the Consular Report of Birth Abroad. Back in the 1990’s Happykid’s social security card had to be mailed to an address in the US, so it is possible that your card was mailed to a friend or family member in the US and your parents have forgotten about this. Also, if your parents are filing US income tax returns every year, they have been putting your SSN on those returns because that is part of the requirement for listing dependents.
When you apply to colleges and universities, telling them that you are a citizen should be good enough. They aren’t likely to ask for proof of US citizenship unless there is no match between your name and your SSN when you file the FAFSA for financial aid. For college applications, if the SSN is requested, look carefully to see if it is specifically required for the paperwork to go through. Often it isn’t because of issues related to identity theft.
I agree with happymomof1. You will have been assigned a SS number at birth when your parents submitted the paperwork to get your “Consular Report of Birth Abroad”. If your parents do not have it, perhaps the US citizen services desk of the US embassy or consulate in your city can help you get a replacement SS card.
is not precisely correct- you have to do separate paperwork for it (or at least you did in the late 90’s, which is presumably the time period relevant to the OP). Nevertheless, if the OPs parents have been filing their taxes, it’s hard to imagine that they aren’t claim the dependent benefit, in which case they will have a SSN for the OP.
And as everybody has said, OP, for simply applying it’s not an issue.
If u have never been to the US (or US territory) but are a US citizen by birth, then doesn’t that mean one of your parents has to be a US citizen?
If so, then is that US citizen parent earning any income at all? And if so, shouldn’t that US citizen be filing a US income tax return? And if a US income tax return is being filed, then shouldn’t you have been claimed as a dependent on the tax return (requires reporting your SSN)?
^If OP is living in one of the many countries where the average salary is about 200 dollars a month and annual income is about $2,00-2,500, that parent is unlikely to be taxable…
