PESEL number, passport, and ID in Poland

When I get my citizenship confirmation my plan is to apply for both the ID card and Passport at the same time. Of course these are issued by different offices.

1. If both offices give me a PESEL number when I apply will this mean my passport and my ID card will have different numbers?

2. The PESEL number is required for the online tracking. Will I be able to get my PESEL number while they are processing my documents so I can track my documents? Applying for the PESEL number separately is not really an option because I'm in a bit of a hurry.

3. Do I need two copies of my registered birth certificate to apply to both offices? Can make a notarized copy of the one I have?

Sorry to say, but you won't be able to apply for both at the same time. You'll need to present the ID card in order to get the passport if you intend to apply in Poland.

I started the process last summer. Like a total idiot I stated that I was married. This act of honesty alone added three months to that snake.

As it turns out, to get a passport I need pesel. OK so far. To get a pesel I need to register my marriage in Poland. Why? Because pesel is different if you are married.

At the Polish Consulate in Chicago I was told that to start the process of registering my marriage I need to bing a notarized copy of the US certificate. A week and 15 bucks later I was back, proud and happy, ready to fill out the relevant forms and part with another 85 bucks.

Where is your wife? Do I need to have my wife here? Yes.

This is when I drew a very red line and threw a fit: My wife has nothing to do with me getting my passport renewed. In the US, my marital status and my passport are separate, stand alone issues. And, as it happens, my wife hates my guts and told me to get lost when I told her to come along.

The above are direct quotes. So I filled out the form and signed for my absent wife. They quickly removed the wife's forged signature and accepted the form. I won.

A week or so ago, I got an email from the consulate that my Polish marriage certificate is ready for pick up. They can stick where the sun does not easily reach. I will not even bother. Predictably, these plastic Polish robots evidently forgot that we have what is officially know here as USPS which gladly and promptly could for 50 cents deliver that certificate to me and save me the trip to Lake Shore Drive and back and the parking fee.

Never again.

@Documaster
You won't get two different pesel numbers. It's a unique number based on your date of birth and five other digits - with different coded meaning. It's given once for a lifetime - any possible changes might be connected with sex change or being adopted, definitely not getting married.

@Documaster
You don't say where you were born, but if not in Poland, I've got some more bad news for you. You need a Polish birth certificate. You get this by sending in (or taking in) your foreign birth certificate. The snag is, you don't get it back so if, like me, you don't want to surrender the original, you need to allow time to apply for a copy in the country where you born. You will also have to have this translated because even if you had your birth certificate translated for confirmation of citizenship, the number (and quite possibly the wording) of the new one will be different.

@kaprys
I understand it's calculated, but if I start the process in two different offices then they might calculate two numbers and then there might be a problem.

@Documaster if you could start the process in two different offices, you would have a point but as Delphiandomine says, you need your ID card before you can apply for a passport so that scenario would never occur.

They won't. The system is designed to prevent such situations happening, and anyway, the issuing of the PESEL is a separate administrative decision to applying for an ID card or passport.

The bad news for you is that it will take 3-4 weeks for the ID card to be issued, and without it, you can't apply for a passport in Poland.

It takes about 10 minutes to get a PESEL at Urzad Miejski

My birth certificate was registered by my lawyer, but I don't have the original. Is it in their computer system? Do I need to produce the original?

The one that was registered will have been kept. Your birth will now be registered in the polish records so you now need a copy of that registration.

I have scans of the registrations in my email, but I don't have the paper originals of the registrations. They say Rzeczpospolita Polska at the top and the two scans each have different serial numbers. Can I just order more of these, or do I need to order more birth certificates from the US and have them appostilled?

I called the local office, and although my US birth certificate was registered in Warsaw I can have a copy printed here for 22 PLN. Yeah.

You can just order more.

Merged:

Help with renewing a Polish passport with no pesky PESEL number

I was born in Poland in 1977, two years before the PESEL system was rolled out across the country. My last passport issued was in 1993 when I was 16 years old and does not have a PESEL number in and just has a blank space for it. I have not renewed my passport since and have lived in the UK from 1998 till the present day. I now needed to renew it. However after hours on the phone to the Polish London based consulate, they aren't providing me with much help as to whether I do indeed have a PESEL number or whether I need to reapply, has anybody had a similar issue and if so, how was it resolved?

Thanks. :)

As a foreign company (Dutch) I am told I need to request a PESEL number for sending documents electronically to KRS. The Polish embassy in my country told me to fill in the PDF document at obywatel.gov.pl/dokumenty-i-dane-osobowe/uzyskaj-numer-pesel-dla-cudzoziemcow Where do I need to send this document to in Poland? The embassy in Netherlands said I need to contact Dutch embassy in Poland and they don't know and referred me back to ambassy in Netherlands. Catch-22 situation. Now what is the address I need to send this document to?

To Urząd Miejski of the place where you are registered as resident. If you do not have a registered address in Poland, I don't think you can get PESEL.

This may help: radcaprawny.info/en/pesel-for-foreigner/