US Born living in India - Indian passport
 

What travel documents should one have when going to US for short trip - born in US but traveling on Indian passport ?
apply for tourist visa ?

Without tourist visa - with only birth certificate ? Will airline allow boarding ?Other potential problem?

Any advise appreciated

us embassy/consulate can tell you.....good luck...

Welcome to FlyerTalk!!

If you have US citizenship/passport you are supposed to enter the US using those credentials. If you do not then the fact that you were born in the US is of less significance; you are treated based on your citizenship and residency.

But the fact that he was born in the US barring rare instances (child of diplomats, renouncing citizenship etc ) means HE IS a US citizen, he just never went to get a passport.

To the OP it may be easier to go to consulate to get PP than to get Visa

India does not recognise dual citizenship, NO EXCEPTIONS.

An Indian passport is issued under the specific and explicit prohibition of possessing a passport issued by another country. There are criminal penalties for this action and there actually is enforcement of this law. An Indian citizen who may be eligible for foreign citizenship (via birth or residence abroad) must swear an affadavit under penalty of perjury that they do not hold citizenship of another country prior to being issued an Indian passport.

If the OP wishes to obtain a US passport, he would have to relinquish his Indian citizenship. As his Indian citizenship is not obtained by birth, he may not be eligible to reclaim it at a later date, depending on his circumstances.

If he carries another passport there is a decent chance that he has renounced citizenship. While it is possible to hold dual citizenship in some cases they are not the most common ones.

B747 is correct..either you can get US citizenship by jus soli (right of soil) but that means you have to reliquish Indian citizenship. You can't just travel to US on your "birth certificate"..your Indian passport means you are an Indian citizen at this point and need a US visa.

One can renounces one's U.S. citizenship in the presence of U.S. official entities, in his case the U.S. consulate. Mind you he OP has not claimed the U.S. citizenship, he has claimed U.S. birth. There is a reason for that. He cannot claim U.S. citizenship through birth ans yet satisfy the Indian law. It is impossible for someone with an Indian passport to be a dual citizen. Even the U.S. officials do not look at dual citizens in a very positive light these days. I know several people who have had to give up their "other" citizenship.

No airline will give him a BP without a visa. The immigration control will stop him too. However, if he traveled to another country where visa requirements are not enforced at the departing airport, he might be able to get to the U.S. soil, where he can press his case for U.S. citizenship by showing his birth certificate. As long as he is in India, he had better not claim the U.S. citizenship. There is no requirement to relinquish your citizenship when you acquire U.S. citizenship.
B747 is, indeed, correct, but you are not 100% correct. India considers him an Indian citizen. It does not mean that the U.S. cannot consider him a U.S. citizen. It is not India's requirement that the OP must have a visa to enter the U.S., but as a matter of policy, Indian airports, I think,under a directive for the MEA, will not allow a person to travel out of India without proper travel documents such as a visa. An Indian citizen does not have to a have a U.S. visa to travel to enter the U.S. A permanent residency will do the trick too. ;) I don't know if the MEA still adorns Indian passports with "Immigration Clearance (not) required".

As far as the OP is concerned, the OP might be a U.S. citizen, but when he is in India, he IS an Indian citizen, since that's what the OP claimed. Even if anyother country considers the opt their citizen, it is meaningless as far as India is concerned. However, once the OP is able to get on a plane bound fr the U.S., entry into the U.S. might be allowed on the basis of his/her birth certificate.

This is a big problem for Indian citizens who were born in the USA. While the USA may sometimes turn a blind eye to the situation for children (i.e. allowing them, unofficially, to visit the US on an Indian passport) they are less relaxed about the situation for adults.

As far as the US is concerned, US citizens must enter the USA on a US passport. The USA is not, in general, worried about what other passport the person might legitimately hold or what passport (US or other) the person uses outside the US. (Merely getting and using a non-US passport or acting on the non-US citizenship in some other way does not of itself result in loss of US citizenship.)

India, however, takes a different stance and, in essence, it is not possible to hold another, non-Indian passport in addition to an Indian one.

I think my first step would be, somehow, to contact a US consulate. They could take two approaches. The "official" one would be that the OP either enters the USA on a US passport or else renounces US citizenship and then travels to the USA on an Indian passport with a visa, in the ordinary way. They might bend the rules (though I doubt it) and issue a visa anyway. What is certain is that they will have dealt with this situation before. The trouble is going to be that consulates are not always very easy to contact in this way, but that would be what I would try first.

One problem is that US citizenship, once renounced, cannot be regained except by naturalisation in the usual way. The fact that a person who renounces US citizenship was born in the USA makes no difference to that.

The first problem would be getting on the plane, though. The check-in staff are going to want to see documents that fulfil their criteria for entry to the USA, and a US birth certificate won't be among them — basically they'll want a US passport, a visa-waiver program passport, a Canadian passport, or a passport with a visa in it...

If the OP would like to claim his US citizenship, assuming he has the right to, it might be a decent option as one can still get PIO status etc with that US passport.

Read upthread that I have already stated that no airline would give him a BP without a visa nor would he be able to get trough the immigration check.
You can, indeed, get on a plane with an Indian passport and no U.S. visa on it.

The op is in a mess indeed. If he is, indeed, a U.S. citizen, by virtue of his birth, the U.S. consulate will not issue him a visa. If represents himself to the U.S. consulate as a non U.S. citizen in order to get a visa, I don't know if that qualifies as renunciation of the U.S. citizenship, but he/she will appear in front of a consular officer as a non-U.S. citizen. Is he an Indian citizen by naturalisation or by birth? If he/she was naturalised to Indian citizenship, after the age if 18, he/she may have already lost the U.S. citizenship.
The mistake the OP made was applying for an Indian passport, instead of a U.S. passport.

What's puzzling is why OP's parents did not get a U.S. passport for them when the OP was born. It's likely they did that out of expediency. If they were planning to return to India or travel to India, getting a U.S. passport for the baby might have meant that they would have to get an Indian visa for the baby. As far as I know based on things I have heard from those who have chosen to get their baby added on the mother's passport that the baby must be registered as an Indian national at the time of birth. Since the OP was born in the U.S. he would have needed some kind of a passport to travel to India. I am assuming OP's name was added to the mother's passport.

That's not so in practice nowadays. Dual citizenship is not only frowned upon but is actively discouraged to the extent that some employment avenues are closed to dual citizens. I have had to state that I do not hold any other citizenship. Not only holding dual citizenships, but any action that shows substantial connection with any other country can close certain avenues.