Passport renewal and ROM at NYC embassy

[Charina&Scott 3]

Our experience with Report of Marriage (ROM) and passport renewal at the NYC embassy.

My wife was due to renew her Philippine passport before it expired. We live in NJ so traveled to NYC for this. As much as I researched and prepared ahead of time, we had a few surprises. So to hopefully help someone else, here is what we learned.

We wanted to have her passport show her new middle and last name so:

Downloaded the Report of marriage form from the official NYC embassy website: newyorkpcg.org. This is not the site linked from the main US Philippine embassy site. Also the forms seem to be custom per embassy, with at least the address completed at the top.

Filled it out in Microsoft Word and printed 4 copies.

Obtained 4 passport photos of myself, and 4 of my wife. Taped them to the 4 forms.

The only mistake I made on the ROM form was for the husband (USC) it asked for my mother’s maiden name in the place of middle name (Filipino name format). I did as it requested. Wrong, they wanted my middle name exactly as in my passport.

Made copies of her passport main page. My wife had traveled back to the Philippines so the I-94 was removed. Fortunately I had scanned her passport before she traveled, and had that page. They wanted the I-94 page copies (with visa), so don’t know what they would have done if I had not saved it.

Our Marriage Certificate does not show how many times we were each married, so went to the county clerk, and they gave me a stamped/certified copy of our marriage license. The clerk knew exactly what I needed.

If you are divorced, you will need to include a copy of your divorce papers. Note: this is not stated anywhere, but they will not accept the ROM without them. (Unfortunately I didn’t do this and took a while to fix)

Lastly since we did not submit this within 30 days of being married, we generated an Affidavit of delayed registration. This is the only thing that needs to be notarized. (copy is attached)

Note: all but the ROM forms are copies. They will want to see the originals for; Marriage Certificate, Marriage license, Divorce decree, Notarized Delayed registration. They look at these originals then give them back to you.

Downloaded the passport renewal form, filled it out in Microsoft word, and printed one.

There is also a form for passport amendment for name change. I filled it out and brought it with me just in case. It is not needed though. The ROM and passport renewal is all they need.

What is not clear is that they need another copy of the entire ROM package with the passport renewal form. So copy the ROM form (after attaching the pictures) and another complete copy of all ROM papers. (I didn’t do this, thinking I would get a receipt for the ROM to include. I was wrong and had to make copies of everything, including yet a 5th copy of my divorce decree.)

Of course I did not have enough copies of everything with me. Fortunately I had brought my binder of paperwork with me that had a copy of my divorce decree. Note: They have one copy machine there for $0.25 per page, so cost me about $20 in quarters to fix everything and since everyone else also needs it over an hour. If that machine breaks, everyone is out of luck.

At the embassy, on the 3rd floor we submitted the ROM. Signed all 4 originals of the ROM form in front of the person.

Was asked to see all the original documents and our two passports, checked off they saw them and returned to us all the originals and passports.

Then, Submitted the Passport renewal, my wife signed this in front of the person.

We chose to not pick the new passport up in person so had her passport cancelled. They punched holes in it and gave it back to us.

Paid at the cashier.

Went to the basement for Boimetrics.

As we chose to not pick the new passport up in person, gave the Boimetrics person a prepaid USPS envelope. We just went to the post office and asked what we needed. They gave us one of the priority mail cardboard envelopes, attached a green tracking confirmation, and added a little under $6 in stamps. We put our address on it. The wall at biometrics had examples of this. What they didn’t tell us is if you don’t want to go back to pick up the processed ROM, you can have it sent with the passport. Just write on the inside flap of the envelope “Please include ROM”, and they will send both together. They forgot to tell us upstairs, but we were lucky and our biometrics person asked us about this.

Done. Now just waiting 6-8 weeks for delivery

Affidavit of delayed registration.doc

[jean♥bill 2]

Great information! Thanks.