Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco
Every service at this post requires an appointment
Passports are booked nationally at passport.gov.ph. Everything else — dual citizenship, notarials, civil registry — is booked through this post’s own system, and no two posts use the same one. There is no walk-in queue.
All applicants must appear in person for a passport, whatever their age, because the biometrics are taken on site. Passports are printed in Manila and mailed back in six to eight weeks: there is no express service abroad.
The Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco covers Northern California,
Northern Nevada, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming from an office on Sutter Street, in the
blocks between Union Square and Nob Hill. It is the second most searched Philippine
post in the country, after Los Angeles.
Its territory is unusual: 46 Californian counties — everything from Alameda
and Santa Clara up to Del Norte and Modoc — plus Carson City and thirteen Nevada
counties, and then three entire Mountain West states that have no Philippine office of
their own.
Address, hours and contact details in San Francisco
The thing to get right here is the boundary. San Francisco does not cover
San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa
Barbara, Kern, San Luis Obispo or Imperial — those are
Los Angeles. It does cover
Fresno, Bakersfield's neighbours to the north, Sacramento, San Jose and the whole Bay
Area. If you are in the middle of the state, look up your county before you book: the
line runs between Kern and Tulare, not where you would expect.
For Colorado, Utah and Wyoming this is a long trip, and it is worth checking the
outreach schedule first. Denver and Salt Lake City both have large enough Filipino
communities to see missions.
What this post can do for you
A Philippine career post handles the full consular catalogue. These are the procedures people come for, most searched first:
- Philippine passport renewal in the United States: Ten years for adults, five for minors, printed in Manila and mailed back in six to eight weeks. Why you must appear in person and why nine months’ notice is the real deadline.
- Philippine dual citizenship under RA 9225: For natural-born Filipinos who lost citizenship by naturalising abroad. The oath does not require renouncing your other nationality, and minor children come in as derivatives.
- Special Power of Attorney and consular notarisation: Twenty-five dollars a document, personal appearance required, and the consulate will neither draft your document nor act as your witness.
- Report of Birth and Report of Marriage: How to register a child born in the United States or a marriage celebrated here so that they exist in the Philippine civil registry. Mail-only at most posts.
- Affidavit of One and the Same Person: The document that fixes a name that does not match between your PSA birth certificate and your US passport. It is what stops most dual citizenship and passport applications.
- Philippine visa and visa-free entry for US travellers: US passport holders enter visa-free for 30 days, balikbayans for a year, and 9(A) visas are now filed online at evisa.gov.ph — not at the consulate counter.
What you can settle without going to San Francisco
More than people expect, and this is where most wasted trips come from. Three of the most searched Philippine procedures in the United States do not happen at a consulate at all:
- PSA certificates — birth, marriage, death and CENOMAR — are issued by the Philippine Statistics Authority and ordered online. The consulate asks for them; it does not print them.
- Apostilles on American documents come from the Secretary of State of the state that issued them. Since 15 May 2019 the consulate cannot authenticate them.
- NBI clearance is issued by the NBI in the Philippines and applied for by mail. The only consular step is notarising your fingerprint card.
What genuinely requires you at a counter is anything with a signature or a fingerprint on it: the biometrics for a passport, the oath of allegiance, and signing a power of attorney in front of a consular officer.
Fees, accepted payment methods and document checklists are on the requirements page, and every procedure has its own guide in the procedures section.
philippineconsulates.us is an independent information guide to the Philippine consulates in the United States. We are not the Philippine Consulate General, the Philippine Embassy or any government agency. We do not book, sell or manage appointments: every post runs its own system. We check the details regularly, but they can change without notice — always confirm with the post before you travel.