A citizenship certificate is an important document that must be kept safe as this document is issued to a US citizen as a proof of US citizenship. In case you lose it, you must immediately report the loss of your document and file an application for replacement and the USCIS form that must be filed to replace your certificate of citizenship is Form N-565, Application for Replacement Naturalization/Citizenship Document. A person who wants to replace a declaration of intention, naturalization certificate or a repatriation certificate, also can file Form I-565.
Form I-565, is very simple and self explanatory and it contains only 8 parts. You will have to enter personal information about you in the first part and in the second part, you need to mention the reason for filing this form. As you are filing this petition to replace your lost citizenship certificate, you will have to check the box beside “New Certificate of Citizenship”. Followed by that you will have to explain the reason why and how your certificate of citizenship was lost.
If you can write the reason in the space that is provided, you may enter the reason in the space that is provided below that question or you may use an additional sheet of paper to explain the reason. If you had lost your certificate while traveling within the United States, you will have to mention the place where you lost it. Similarly, if you had lost it while in a foreign country, you need to enter the name of that foreign country and explain how you lost it, for example, if you had misplaced your citizenship document, while traveling to Mexico, you will have to explain where and how you lost it, in Mexico. Likewise, if your document was stolen, you must enter the name of the place where it was stolen or if it was stolen from your house, you will have to describe the incident. However, you need to lodge a police complaint as soon as you find that your certificate of citizenship is missing and file Form I-565 along with a copy of that police complaint.