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No matter what kind of visa your child enters the U.S. on (an IR-3 or an IR-4) he/she will benefit if you re-adopt them in your home state. Since the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 an IR-3 visa means that a child is automatically a U.S. citizen upon entrance to the country (so make sure you cheer as soon as those plane wheels touch ground!).

There are five great reasons to re-adopt your child.

1. A Legal and Binding Birth Certificate

Life a marriage certificate, your child will often need a copy of their birth certificate. They will need it for their driver’s license, their marriage license, bank accounts, etc. It will make the process much easier to have a birth certificate from a state department.

Anyone have difficulty getting a marriage license from an island wedding?

2. A Legal Name Change

For children born in countries like Guatemala a legal name change most likely needs to be completed. This is the time to do so.

3. Not all States Recognize a Foreign Adoption Decree (and even I did not know this).

There are 18 states, DC, and four U.S. Territories that have no statutory provisions for international adoptions. So, they do not have to recognize an international decree.

• Alabama
• Arizona
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New York
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Utah
• Virginia
• West Virginia
• Wyoming
• American Samoa
• Guam
• Puerto Rico
• U.S. Virgin Islands

4. What if you move to one of those states?

We were lucky to move out of one of those states but we made sure that our will prefaced our son as our adopted son, Alexander, to ensure that he would be seen as a legal heir.

5. Nostalgia

In my heart, the Russian and Guatemalan birth certificates for my boys are precious. I certainly don’t want them stained because someone as Little League spilled coffee on them.