DNA Paternity Test for US Embassy in Bangkok or USCIS

Many people have seemed overwhelmed by trying to understand U.S. government website articles, so we will try to explain as simply as we can, but of course, as a disclaimer, we are not the authority and might be wrong, government requirements sometimes change so that this page could be obsolete by the time you read it, and you should follow the U.S. government sites rather than us.

Regarding submissions of DNA paternity test reports for applications for American citizenship, there are two kinds of situations. We can help in one kind, but not in the other kind.

1. Supporting documentation for an initial application: A man may want to find out for sure whether or not he is the biological father before he files an application with the American Embassy. If the DNA Test Report states that he is the biological father, then he thereafter may include that DNA Test Report in his initial application for American citizenship for the child. We can help with this, but we cannot guarantee it will be accepted.

   or

2. Embassy requested DNA test: This is when a man has already submitted an application for citizenship for a child, and the U.S. government has responded to his application which includes requesting a DNA test and instructions on how to carry it out, including the requirement that he contact an AABB certified laboratory directly by a particular process according to their guidelines. We cannot help with this.

   That process of following these U.S. government's guidelines to contact an AABB certified laboratory directly is much more complicated, time consuming, and expensive than item 1. The man must contact an AABB certified laboratory directly and follow their process, whereby a test kit is mailed directly from the laboratory to the American Embassy, and another appointment is scheduled for the DNA collection by the embassy's own official DNA collection agent (aka "panel physician or designee"). The man cannot deal with any other party in Thailand for this, besides the embassy and their official local agent.

There are private companies in Thailand such as ours which send the samples they/we collect in Thailand to an AABB certified laboratory in the USA, but which are not an AABB certified laboratory in Thailand. There is a difference between being a laboratory vs. being a collection agent or affiliate of a laboratory which ships DNA samples to the laboratory. AABB = American Association of Blood Banks, which is the authority in the USA for immigration purposes.

The DNA Test Report is the same for item #1 above (supporting documentation) and item #2 above (embassy requested DNA test), if a legal chain of custody test was chosen for item #1. For item #2, the laboratory sends the DNA Test Report to the embassy directly. For item #1, we send the DNA Test Report to you.

A DNA test is not always required to gain U.S. citizenship. It is up to the consular officer(s) handling your case to tell you whether or not a DNA test is required.

If you don't know for sure whether or not you are the biological father, then you may want to resolve that issue first before you apply for U.S. citizenship for the child. If U.S. citizenship is granted but later you find out that you are not the biological father, then it may be too late ...

Of course, you can do a private DNA test in advance (item #1 above), bring that DNA Test Report with you to the embassy on your first visit when applying for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA), and present it as part of your initial supporting documentation. However, it is still up to the consular officer(s) handling your case to decide whether or not another DNA test is required, and how they may handle your application.

There are various statements by DNA collection agents on the internet promoting their services for various fees without going into all the details about U.S. government requirements and the bigger picture. Even if they say that the American Embassy or the U.S. government has accepted (or accepts) their tests ... you had better be aware of what the embassy says. The embassy might indeed accept their (or our) DNA Test Report as part of their supporting documentation upon a first visit, but again, that is up to the consular officer(s). It is suggested you read multiple sources, including the U.S. government's own statements, e.g.:

"... the lab must send the DNA test kit directly to the applicable U.S. embassy or consulate. Parents, or other relatives being tested, must not directly receive test kits for themselves or their children. Once the U.S. embassy or consulate receives a DNA kit from an accredited laboratory, they will schedule an appointment for DNA sample collection by an authorized panel physician or designee."

The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy states that "under no circumstances should petitioners use third-party vendors to select their lab, arrange appointments, or transport specimens outside of the lab chain of custody controls." (US Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 9 FAM 42.44 N6 c.)

The U.S. government has changed its regulations on DNA paternity testing over the years, so it is important you conform to their current requirements. It can be a considerable amount of work to try to figure out what the U.S. government is actually saying in their sometimes long and bureaucratic website statements, but you may want to start by shortcutting to the link (repeated below) for Travel.State.Gov > Legal Resources > Legal Resources > U.S. Citizenship Laws and Policy > Information for Parents on U.S. Citizenship and DNA Testing, then scroll down to near the bottom of the page and click on the + link to expand the section on "DNA Sample Collection Outside the United States".

We have received two kinds of inquiries:

• An American man wanting to file an application for a Thai child in Thailand through the American Embassy in Bangkok (or the consulate in Chiang Mai), which is the most common situation, or

• An American man wanting to file an applications for a Thai child through an office in the USA of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), whereby the child is in Thailand.

Notably, the USCIS no longer has a field office in Bangkok. "USCIS permanently closed its field office in Bangkok, Thailand, on Dec. 31, 2019. The U.S. embassy in Bangkok assumed responsibility for certain limited services previously provided by USCIS to individuals residing in Thailand ..." ^{USCIS-archive}

For more information, you should visit:

Travel.State.Gov > Legal Resources > Legal Resources > U.S. Citizenship Laws and Policy > Information for Parents on U.S. Citizenship and DNA Testing

The above link is working as of September 2023, but other links I previously cited to U.S. government websites eventually stopped working and don't give any forwarding link, just a 404. Previously, another U.S. government link had stated "Under no circumstances should a third party be involved in the process of selecting a lab, scheduling the appointment, or any other process outlined in the next steps."

We offer two kinds of tests: The more economical "personal knowledge only" test, and the legal chain-of-custody (CoC) test. The phrase "chain of custody" is not referring to child custody, it is referring to custody of the DNA samples by a neutral third party who signs off that the samples are from the individuals properly identified and documented, and that the collection agent controlled the samples. The kind of test depends upon the method of DNA collection. The test data is the same, but the DNA Test Report looks different as regards language. See our section on personal vs. legal chain of custody collections and reports

The CoC test may be more likely to be accepted by some applications, and is a standardized collection process. It also costs more than the personal knowledge only test. Our DNA collection agent is the "neutral third party" for CoC tests.

However, the embassy has their own designated neutral third party, who charges an additional fee. You pay for two things: You pay the AABB certified laboratory for this process, plus you pay the embassy's panel physician or designee. (The last I saw, it was 4200 baht per person, e.g., if child, mother, and alleged father, then 4200 x 3 = 12,600 baht just to the embassy's panel physician or designee, in addition to what you pay to the laboratory.)

It has been this way for many years. Countless people have contacted us asking questions, many of them confused and having difficulty trying to figure out what are the actual steps they must take, which they may hope are more simply stated, after trying to read a lot of government bureaucratic literature. Some have even asked a lawyer to help them, believing a lawyer may figure it all out for them.

Basically, you must contact one of those laboratories on the U.S. government's list of AABB accredited laboratories directly, not through a third party agency in Thailand.

The laboratory will collect a lot of information about you and your case from the US Embassy in Bangkok, take your money via credit card or whatever they will accept, with their own fee typically fully paid in advance, and will get in contact with the US Embassy in Bangkok directly from the USA. They will send all the DNA sample collection materials to the US Embassy plus a prepaid return envelope.

After that, you will schedule an appointment with the embassy for the DNA test. The embassy will arrange for samples to be collected by their panel physician or designee.

The DNA Test Report provided by the laboratory is a CoC report.

That said, if you are not sure whether or not you are the biological father, then you may want to get a DNA test before you go to the US Embassy, or have one of our DNA sample collection agents go to your location if the baby is outside of Bangkok. You can find out much more quickly and cheaply whether or not you are the biological father, and without all the bureaucracy. If you are the biological father, then you may choose to start the long process of applying for the Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CBRA) which establishes the child as a US citizen, after which you can get a US passport for the child.

Whether or not a DNA test is required is up to the consular officer handling your case. It depends on the circumstances. A DNA test may not be required. Indeed, a DNA test is often not required!

People have asked us whether the American Embassy has ever accepted our DNA Test Report from our company in Bangkok for the parties swabbed by us in Thailand whereby we managed the case as if it was a non-embassy case. The answer is yes, but we cannot recommend you try it this way unless you first want to find out for sure whether or not you are the biological father before going to the American Embassy to apply for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA), a passport, or immigration. We are aware of applications to the American Embassy with our DNA Test Report in which another DNA test was not requested and US citizenship was granted. We are not aware of any applications which were rejected by the American Embassy and which included our DNA Test Report where the father was not excluded as the biological father. We have not made a systematic effort to follow up with all clients.

Of course, we cannot say what the embassy officers based their decisions on, or what all they were thinking.

People of other nationalities have also requested a DNA test and stated that they planned to use it with their other embassies in an application for citizenship if the test established paternity. We have not followed up on all submissions, and actually we haven't followed up on many clients. However, thus far, we are not aware of any rejections, and we are aware of some cases where their application was accepted.

Notably, men who have been married to a Thai lady and had a child who they already got foreign citizenship for, have come to us later to do a DNA paternity test because they started to question whether or not they are the biological father. Not all of them have been found to be the biological father.

As with other countries, if you get citizenship for a child at your embassy, and later find out that you are not the biological father, then you may have another very expensive, time consuming, and tedious process to deal with that, if you want to try to avoid any potential problems after you have gone through the process of establishing yourself as the legal father. It is not so simple as just "deleting" a citizen, and nullifying all their records everywhere, just based on a DNA test report which came out later. After you have signed off on all the normal paperwork and the citizenship becomes official, then you cannot unsign things. There are standard processes for becoming a citizen, but it's another matter to try to make a citizen into a non-citizen. Paternity fraud is not the same as application fraud. If there was no fraud in your application, and it was approved, and everything was signed and made official, whereby the child became a citizen already, then you have quite a challenge to deal with that situation. Governments don't always require a paternity test for giving citizenship to a child, and you can't depend on your government to always save you in your personal matters. It's better to save yourself.

If you have any doubts at all whether or not you are the biological father, then you may want to resolve that issue before any application for citizenship to your country.

The U.S. government's requirements for DNA paternity testing are spelled out here:

https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/130607.pdf

The Managing Director of our company, Mark Prado, worked for other parts of the US government before, so is familiar in general with how some things are done by governments. He came here in 1994 because the Asia Regional Office is in Bangkok, Thailand, but afterwards switched to purely private sector work. He has completed an AABB training program and passed the exam for DNA relationship testing sample collection.

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