Criminal Background Checks

Residencies & citizenships
1

Two questions about criminal background checks. I’m in Portugal trying to naturalize.

  1. I lived in Malaysia and China. Both countries have refused to issue criminal background checks. They don’t even respond to requests. What can I do about that?
  2. I need an FBI background check. The US Embassy lists some (semi-private) ways of getting that done and then having it apostilled. I’d like to hear from anyone who did that successfully. How long should I expect that to take?
    Thanks!
2

What’s the IRN’s requirement for point 1?
Do you need to collect criminal certs from all countries you ever lived in? For more than 1 year?

On the question of obtaining a foreign certificate, I know in some countries officially they may refuse, but there are agencies who can still do it for you, regardless of your ties to the country. So maybe worth searching online for such agencies.

3

I went to my local IRN. They don’t know how to do naturalizations and said I should go to Lisbon so I’ll do that. I hope they can answer #1. The US Embassy has guidelines for #2. There seem to be a few paths… I’d like to hear what others experienced but I hope to report back with some success if I have to reinvent the wheel.