Philippine Consulate General in Houston
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 Houston serves Texas, Arkansas,
Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma from an office on Richmond Avenue in
the Westchase district, west of downtown. It is the Philippine post for the Gulf
Coast and the Southwest.
Texas alone accounts for most of its workload, and the state is big enough that the
post is backed by an honorary consulate in
Dallas and another in
New Orleans.
Address, hours and contact details in Houston
Houston publishes three trunkline numbers rather than one, plus a separate
emergency line. That is not disorganisation: it is a small post covering six states,
and the numbers ring in different sections. If one does not answer, try the next
before assuming the office is closed.
Distance is the real issue in this jurisdiction. From El Paso to Houston is a
twelve-hour drive; from Little Rock or Oklahoma City it is most of a day. Before
committing to that, check whether your procedure needs you at all — a
PSA certificate, an
apostille and the paperwork side of an
NBI clearance are all handled without setting
foot in a consulate.
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.
Honorary consulates under this post
They cannot issue passports or take the dual citizenship oath, but they are the closest official Philippine contact in their area and the first place to hear about an outreach mission:
- Philippine Honorary Consulate in Dallas — 8315 Navisota Drive, Lantana, TX 76226
- Philippine Honorary Consulate in New Orleans — 6660 Riverside Drive, Suite 102, Metairie, LA 70003
What you can settle without going to Houston
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.