I have looked online, and like you, cannot find any official reference to the requirement for a recently issued birth certificate, except for a minor.
For applications for naturalization on the basis of 5 yearsā residence in Portugal, in the section on proof of birth it requires what Matt @goner00brained did and suggested, without reference to a recent issue of the certificate.
The apostille certifies a notarised birth certificate.
If you are in the US and get a new birth certificate, you will have it apostilled in the state you were born in. I adopted my nephew and he was born in another state, it lists me as the mother and I was able to get it apostilled in that state. My daughter and I in a different state. I started with the county, county recorderās office in the state he was born in.
If I may, I have a different question and Iām hoping to get advice from someone who has direct experience. I am a naturalized Venezuelan citizen applying for Portuguese citizenship. To make a long story short, I would like to submit a birth certificate issued by my country of birth, where I am currently residing, but my lawyer insists that the birth certificate must be issued by my country of citizenship, which for inexplicable reason looks like will cost me 2000-3000 dollars to obtain! Is it really the case that I must submit a birth certificate issued by my country of citizenship or can I submit a certificate issued from the country that I was actually born? Thank you for sharing your experience.
I do not know a country who would issue a birth certificate on behalf of some other country. You could be setting a costly precedent here if you choose to pay the quoted amounts, however I highly doubt it would be a genuine documentā¦
However, I had a similarly odd request once in the past, where I was asked to produce a marriage certificate from my country of residence, despite that I did not marry in that country hence none such document could be issued. After some debate, I satisfied the request by producing a copy of the original certificate notarized by the consulate of the āmarriageā country in the country of residence. That worked.
So in your case, Iād suggest you take your original birth cert from your country of birth, find their consulate in your country of citizenship, and get a copy notarized there. Tell us what your lawyer says about that
Well Portugal does - when you naturalize as Portuguese they create a āPortuguese birth certificateā for you which proves you are a Portuguese citizen (although born overseas).
So naturally Portugal assumes every country in the world does the same
Of course most donāt, they issue e.g. a naturalization certificate that fulfills the same function of proof of the new citizenship.
Was this something that happened to you in Portugal? May I ask which government agency? Your suggestion is exactly what I would like to do but itās my lawyer who is insisting that the ābirth certificateā must be issued in Venezuela. He says that otherwise my application will be rejected and I need to āget in lineā again which will take another 3 years! Having heard this, I am struggling to decide what to do Thank you for sharing your experience.
My children are British citizens by descent but born in Hong Kong. We submitted their apostilled Hong Kong birth certificates with the GV application and they were accepted just fine.
However it is possible for us to get British birth certificates for them, Iāve just not felt the need as yet. I guess if they were born somewhere that getting things like copy certificates, apostilles etc was tricky, then it could be useful.
Would it help if you contacted the Portuguese embassy in Venezuela / the Venezuelan embassy in Portugal and got them to issue a letter that Venezuela does not provide birth certificates to naturalized citizens?
Thank you for your suggestion. Venezuela may not be able to issue a birth certificate for me, but it can issue a Carta de NaturalizaciĆ³n or Datos Filiatorios at a cost of several thousands of dollars. I am seeking confirmation that it is possible to submit a birth certificate from my actual country of birth, not my country of citizenship, to address this problem.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Unfortunately I am told that the entity that processes citizenship applications is not the same as Golden Visas (now AIMA), but it is definitely encouraging to know. Thank you very much!
Once you resolve the situation, please get back to here and let us know what you did in the end, it will help others who will be in same situation as yours in the future
You should ask in the Facebook group " Portuguese Nationality". It is a much wider group (not just GV holders) so there is much more likely to be someone there who had the same issue as you.
No, it was not in Portugal, but similarly my lawyer was requesting this based on the āgovernment rulesā, so I had a good chat with him and we agreed the solution I described above. Actually if I remember right, and this is important - we also added a notarization and apostille from my country of residence! So it was a document double notarized (first by consulate and then by the local notary public) and then apostilled (i.e. apostille was placed upon the local notary public signature).
This way the āgovernmentā were satisfied that my original document was somehow ārecognizedā in my country of residence (does not matter how I guess ).
Someone who was under the same situation as me (we were born in the same country!) confirmed that she was able to submit her application with a BC from the country of birth and not country of citizenship. Thank you for directing me to Portuguese Nationality!
Thank you for sharing your experience.