Taking our 3 year old Canadian back to Australia

I am a Aussie living in Canada and
my husband (Canadian)and I are moving
back to Australia in March 2009.
I was wondering if I registered my
3 year old as a Australian citizen
by descent here in Canada and then
got him a Canadian passport,should
I have any problems when we get to
Customs in Sydney Australia? Or does
our child have to have a AUSTRALIAN
PASSPORT? Im so confused.
In the mean time we have 2 other
children that were born in Australia
with Australian passports and
Canadian Dual citizenships.

First off. have you got a spouse visa for your husband? If you are coming back to live he will be expected to have a spouse visa so that he can enter the country and stay and be allowed to work, etc.

I would get your child citizenship by descent before you leave. If you were then to travel to Australia on a Canadian passport you should be able to show them that he has Australian citizenship. It might create a bit of a hassle at Australian immigration but I can't see how they wouldn't ultimately allow him in. To avoid the hassle why not just get citizenship first and then apply for an Aussie passport while still in Canada. Then there's no problems as he can easily enter with an Aussie passport. Contact the Australian High Commision in Ottawa to find out if that plan indeed works and how to go about doing all that.

http://www.ahc-ottawa.org/otwa/aboutus.html

I think that you can still get your child into Australia on your Canadian passort as long as you can show that the child does in fact have Australian citizenship. You'll have to check and see if that's correct. Either way it would be a lot easier to just get the Aussie passport now. You'll be getting it eventually anyway.

Thanks.for your response! My
husband already is a permenant
resident of Australia and his
paperwork is all completed for a
returning resident etc. Our 2
older boys are all complete its just
getting our 3 year old son back
to Australia.
You see Australian Passports in Ottawa
were telling me our child needs to
go to Ottawa to get his passorts while
Visa and Immigration were telling me
that he will be ok on a Canadian
Passport but you might be held up in
Sydney Australia but as long as Ive
got all my paperwork (Australian by
descent citizenship etc) I should be ok.
They said it would be different if he
was 18 years or older.but being
3 years old they cant really send the
child back to Canada especially
without his family! I dunno seems
weird.or is it just a money making
racket? It cost enough just to move
back to Australia.let alone having
to spend a extra $3000 to go to
Ottawa.that I dont want.

I'm shocked that they would make you go to Ottawa to have them done. If I were you I would get that in writing so that if you were to show up in Australia with just the Canadian passport you would be able to explain why you didn't do them.

Either way. I do believe you can just show up with the Canadian passport and the citizenship certificate. Worst case scenario is it'll just take you a bit longer to get in. I don't see it being a huge problem because, as you say he's 3, and the entire family has citizenship or PR. So they will have to let him because he is a citizen. I have heard of other people doing the same thing, but have no first hand knowledge or the official word on it. So it you've called then I think that plan should work just fine.

So. where are you headed to when you get here?

Thanks again for all your help.
We are going back to Central Coast
NSW.possibly round Avoca,Terrigal
or Wamberal area. Thats where our
2 eldest boys were born and I grew up.

in this, i'm thankfull to be Canadian. When abroad, we can register our child no matter where it's born, with the Cannadian High Commission (Embassy) and it's issued a Canadian birth certificate and passports withing about 9 months.

Canada is one of he few countries that offers such a benefit from what i've learned, and as such, Australia views your child as Canadian until it's able to "emigrate" to Australia. Your best options are 1) speak to the High Commission in Ottawa.
2) speak to the airline - as the airline would be responsible to ship your child (and whichever parent would have to care for them should he be refused entry) back to Canada, they will be reasonably clear about the rules, and will not be much interested in letting you board if you don't have the proper paperwork.

This is just another example of why nationalism sucks. The concept that your child has to pay fees and get special documents at 3 years old to travel anywhere, simply because of the geographic location of his birth is simply ludicrous, and makes me ashamed to be human. I have a hunch that they must check the location of Mars on his birthday before they can grant citizenship.