Thanks - super helpful. Learn something new everytime! 
In case anyone wants to see the precise language that @282cf5067c427e3f7493 is referring to, here goes (copied verbatim from the State Dept):
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I need urgent advice regarding the FBI certificate and apostilles. Iām on my second renewal for the GV. For the first time, SEF is asking for my wifeās FBI criminal record certificate. Which is ridiculous since, though we are US citizens, we have lived in Hong Kong for 30 years.
So now she has to apply for this from Hong Kong and get it apostilled. How do I do this?
First, is it necessary for the fingerprint card to be done by a notary or official, or can she simply do this at home and submit it? Since weāre not in the USA, if it has to be done in front of an official, what kind of agency do they accept?
Second, from what I can tell from the FBIās instruction page, results are sent by secured e-mail. How is one supposed to get such a thing apostilled?
Third, if it is an original document, how do we get it apostilled? Here in Hong Kong, no one in an official capacity will give it an apostille since it is a foreign government issued document.
Iām going crazy about this, since of course the SEF requests it within 10 days, which is obviously impossible. Please help calm my nerves and help me figure this out.
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Wow, what a bummer!..
You should probably submit your wifeās fingerprints on a form that you could print from FBI site in U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong.
In the U.S., you can now submit fingerprints electronically from some post office locations. The consulate might have the same capabilities. If not, you might need to DHL the card and application to the FBI.
Your FBI will be available on-line as well as via mail. You could submit the on-line copy to one of the expediting agencies like Apostille.net. They will use this digital copy to submit it to the Department of the State. Once the document is apostilled, they will expedite it back to you, in HK if necessary (I presume).
Now for the bad news: the last time we did it, it took 5 weeks, and we were in the U.S. at that time! You might need to communicate to SEF the current processing timeline.
Good luck!
Thanks for the guidance. Much needed. I still have a question, whether my wife can simply do the fingerprints herself without an official witness. Due to the pandemic, the US Consulate in Hong Kong is closed for all non-essential services.
And, wow, that aspostille.net is damn expensive!
As for delays in submitting to SEF, well, you donāt know what itās like getting a criminal conviction certificate from Hong Kong and getting it apostilled. The HK Police will ONLY send the report to a requesting consulate or government agency, not the applicant. So I need to apply through the Portuguese consulate in Macau (which I canāt even travel to due to covid). They then send me a letter which I bring to the HK Police. Then the HK Police send the certificate to the consulate. Then the consulate translates and certifies, then I appoint a representative to pick it up and send it to me, then I send to my lawyer in Lisbon. The Macau consulate is still a Portuguese bureaucracy, and they have to do three tasks, so you can imagine the glacial pace. Total time from start to finish: THREE MONTHS!
I am so glad I still live in the U.S. and not in HK!.. 
Sorry to hear about the ordeal of getting the documents apostilled in HK. What a nightmare!
Getting the fingerprints at home does not appear to be an option. Here is a link to the applicable form https://eforms.com/consent/background/fbi/. The link on the page to the fingerprint form reads:
FBI Fingerprint Form FD-258 ā For the submission of fingerprints. If sent by mail at least 2 different copies should be conducted at the LiveScan or Standard Location.
If you click on āStandard Locationā, it would give you a list of authorised agencies, though only in the U.S. Thatās why a suggestion of the U.S. Consulate in HK.
Good luck!
Hello LourenƧo,
I may be a bit late to the party, but will respond anyway, in case it helps someone else.
I would recommend a couple of things for people in situations like yours:
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If you do not have a PT immigration lawyer, you should likely get one as they can help smooth out the 10 day requirement - they know how to talk with SEF to get you more time and also to help you get the papers into SEF. If you do not have one already, I am happy to send you contact information for ours. Sheās awesome.
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Go to a local police station (if possible) and ask if they can do official fingerprints for you. You are allowed to do them yourself on regular paper, but the FBI is quite picky about the prints and may reject you, and you have to start the entire criminal record process all over again (meaning, pay for a new report, and lose a lot of time on the clock).
If you have to do them yourself, I recommend that you use fingerprint ink (maybe Amazon or the like can get you some quickly?) as regular old ink pad ink often times results in rejected prints.
Also if you have to do them yourself, take several sets and print on heavier paper (light cardstock). You can print the official form which you can download online at the FBI website (it can be printed in B&W). If you have a bad print on one copy, by sending multiple sets, the FBI can piece together enough prints for them to clear you and provide the report.
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Make sure you are using the online filing and request your results via secure email (do not ask for hard copy to be mailed or that will cause big delays). Once you have the response from them with your case number (takes less than 24 hours, often it can take as little as 1 hour to get this number) you would send the hard copy prints to the FBI via DHL, UPS, whatever.
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Once they receive the hard copy prints, assuming they are ok, they will usually get you the final report within 5 days. You will now need the apostille.
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To obtain the Apostille from DOS, we have successfully used Monument Visa Services - they are quite reasonable for the work that they do and are very fast (although the total time to process the Apostille is still in DOSās hands).
With Monument, you are able to upload a PDF of your record record that you pulled form your secure email and handle everything online with them. They know exactly how to fill out the Apostille forms so they arenāt rejected, and will get the application request into DOS within 24 hours (often times the same day, depending on when you get the docs to them - they are on the east coast).
The great thing about Monument is that they also help coordinate getting your hard copies of the Apostille from DOS. This is important, because DOS will not send your Apostille internationally. It must be sent to a US address. If you are in Hong Kong, this means that Monument is able to receive your Apostille hard copies and then send them on to your lawyer in Portugal (or maybe directly to SEF? I have not done that personally, so you would have to ask them), for an extra fee (which is much cheaper than the pricing I got directly from a US shipper). They also now offer a scanning service for something like $5, so that you have a copy for your own records (you must send the originals to SEF).
We have used this process pain free both abroad and when in the US with great success. Hopefully this helps you and/or anyone else that may have this same issue.
Good luck!
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Good point. I forgot about the translation, since my lawyer took care of all that. Thanks for pointing that out!
Iāve just done the apostille for a range of documents for our family. Here are some things that I learned. Some of these have been mentioned before in this conversation.
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Donāt use Birth and Marriage certificates that you have on hand. Go to the Register of deeds and get fresh copies. Marriage certificates need to be <6 months old and birth certificates need to be <1 year old (in terms of when they were issued by the government entity).
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For the copy of the TIN, I made a copy of my social security card and had a āTrue copyā attestation notarized.
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For apostille in North Carolina, you can make an online appointment with the secretary of State. You can deliver the documents to Raleigh before 10:00 and pick them up the same day at 4:00 (if after 10 AM drop-off, you can get them the next day). You pay $10 per document and must include a cover letter. Cover letter and appointment link are on THIS page. There is also an option to do this by mail.
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For North Carolina, birth and marriage certificates (anything issued by a state agency) do not need to be notarized. Otherwise you need to notarize your documents. This was a point of confusion to me. I made up my own statement and my Portugal lawyer said it would work. I can comment later to let you know if SEF accepted it. We had to prove the dependency of college-aged kids with bank statements, certificates of enrollment, and a copy of the tuition bill. I made one notarized statement per document. Here is how my statement for the notary went (insert description of document):
Certificate for a True Copy
I, __________, do hereby swear or affirm that the attached is a true copy of the certificate of enrollment as a student for my dependent Jane Doe and that this copy contains no alterations from the original. -
Dependents over 18 also have to swear that they are single. Here is the language for that:
Single Status Affidavit
I, ____ (name of affiant), an American citizen Residing at (full address) ________ personally appeared before the undersigned notary public, and under oath or affirmation make the following statements: I was born on ____ in _____. I am a citizen of the United States. My passport number is _____. I hereby swear under oath that I have never been married. I am now single and otherwise legally free to marry.
Signature of affiant __________________
Date ____________ -
Our FBI background checks were interesting. To do them, you can go to the FBI website and request the background check ($18) and then mail in fingerprints ($0) or have them taken digitally at the Post Office ($50). I tried digital prints at the post office first and the post office near me never had staff to take the prints. It was much easier for me to do it by starting with an approved channeler. I used National Background check also called fast fingerprint and they charge $50 for the background check and $20 to capture your fingerprints digitally. The fingerprint capture was easy and on a walk-in basis with many locations at UPS and PakMail stores. I received the background check within minutes of having my fingerprints taken at the UPS store.
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FBI checks must be apostilled by the Department of State in D.C. I used monument visa to Apostille our FBI checks, but plan to do it myself next time. The main tip here is that the fillable form is broken and populates every line of the table. The price on the form is wrong. Be sure to send the correct money. You must fill out 1 form per FBI Check you want apostilled.
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This is good information. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the information on the channelers - sounds like almost the same cost and more convenient than the post office. BTW, I think you linked to the wrong URL for the channeler you used, because the FBI site has the link without the s at the end. The one with the s seems like some fly by night operation.
Thank you, I tried fixing the link. The version of the website with the āsā is likely a scam.
Agreed, good data.
I have used the Post Office and multiple channelers with success. I surmise they are all fine, plus or minus the staffing at any given location. The White Plains NY post office had experienced staff on hand and did ours just fine. Pick whoeverās nearest to you IMO.
Wendy, for the Proof of Enrollment/Single Status/bank statements for your kids, did you send the notarized versions (document + notarized statement) to be apostilled in NC afterwards?
Thanks, Steve
Yes Steve - exactly that. The NC apostille process was very fast. Dropped the documents off in person one day and picked them up the next day.
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Wendy, thanks for the super fast response! I must admit that I am finding the Apostille requirements somewhat confusing. I am in the ādocuments collectionā phase right now and it seems like every document has a different set of rules/requirements from all the rest!
@sdt1966 our attorneys asked us to use this rule of thumb. Anything issued local/state levels needs State Apostille. Federal documents, like FBI reports, need Apostille through Washington D.C.
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This thread is a little alarming for me, since so far in working with IAS through Mercan I was never asked for an apostille on any government document except the <90 days old FBI criminal background check, and during the document collection process I sent scans of my original decades-old identity documents (birth cert and so on). Nobody called out any problem with the date of issue visible on the scans and those were what got submitted. I did ask just a couple weeks ago to reconfirm that no other documents needed to be apostilled besides the FBI check, and also asked if I needed to bring a fresh <1 year old copy of my birth certificate to the eventual biometrics appointment. They confirmed the FBI check was the only thing that needed an apostille for Pre-Approval and for the Biometrics appointment, no further documents were needed for my case, and once I had my appointment there was no need to bring my birth certificate because I am the sole applicant.
Which seems very strange, I donāt see why applying alone would change the validity requirements of my personal identity documents? But I certainly donāt have the expertise to question their answer.
A edit to this post to clarify, I am reasonably certain they meant by āno further documentsā that nothing else needed apostilles, not that the requirement to bring a fresh <90 days FBI check + apostille to the biometrics appointment has been dropped.
The only documents needed for a single applicant are the FBI check and the TIN/SSN documentation, with the latter being for setting up the bank account presumably, so it makes sense that only the FBI check needs an apostille for you. All these other documents the rest of us need are because our pesky family members, like spouses and children, are included in our applications.
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That was what I had concluded. The thing I found quite helpful in Wendyās post was the description of how she approached getting apostilles for non-governmental documents like bank statements and the like. None of the state websites Iāve looked at for help with the apostille process talk about those kinds of documents.
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Thank you for replying! in that context of what the documents are actually used for in the application process, the differences in the requirements make a lot more sense. My condolences to everyone who has to jump through so many additional hoops though!
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