What counts as “residing” in a country? Tax liability? Visa type? Does a student visa that grants limited part-time working rights for a 19 year old’s college semester abroad 25 years ago count? Does Thailand’s Elite Visa, which grants the holder unlimited stays up to 365 days in length with a validity of 5 years, but is explicitly classified by the Thai government as a type of tourist visa rather than a residence permit and cannot lead to a citizenship application, count? Taking the full 180 days granted by Mexico’s FMM Visitor’s Permit? There are a lot of “not technically-residence permits but theoretically you could call it residing” visa situations out there. And is Portugal expecting applicants to go on a world tour to get fingerprinted in all of the countries that don’t have a means to request criminal database records from outside the territory?
Last I checked it was any country you’d spent more than 1 year in, but check with your lawyer if the new text implies something else.
For me this would be six countries. All to be refreshed every three months. Conservatively, the apostilles cost an average of $150 per item, so not including travel costs if needed to appear in person, that’s $900 every single time…
I don’t think this police certificate requirement for citizenship is new. I was told about the requirement years ago: we would need apostilled policer certificates from every country that we lived in for more than one year. For me this means: UK, Malaysia, China, Thailand, and Portugal. For my partner this means: Brazil, UK, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand and Portugal. We always understood this is a requirement and will cost $$$ to achieve.
More PITA than the cost is the logistics of it… UK, Brazil, Malaysia and Portugal are easy enough. China is an opaque nightmare. Hong Kong is a ridiculous nightmare.
Agreed. It’s not new. I had to do it for 4 countries and my wife had 4 countries. I had China on that list and I literally had to send my current passport to China to an agency to get one from each city I lived in, Beijing + Shanghai. It was one weird process. The costs mostly racked up due to having to hire agencies to manage the process and ensure all PCCs got issued around same time to meet 3 month validity rule
My lawyer must have been a smoother talker, because I’ve only had to do it for my most recent country of residence.
For a Citizenship application? For GV application (and possibly renewal?) it is definitely not so stringent (birth country, nationality if different, current country of residence).
Yes, for GV nationality/citizenship application. For GV residence renewal, it is indeed not stringent requiring every previous country of residence.
I tend to err on side of caution and rather do more than less. My lawyers are the legal firm who have been the most active on pushing back on nationality changes so I trust their judgement.
@Zayd_Khoury Sorry I was replying to @Hippopotamousse and did quote his post in my reply for clarity but that got stripped out.
We agree on the requirements for nationality 
. I wonder if you could PM me the contact you had to get a certificate from China. Mine will need to be from Shenzhen but got to start somewhere. When I left in 2021 I did get a certificate - not aposilled - from the local place but of course that’s hopelessly out of date now even though I’ve not stepped foot back in the country since the day I left and it would therefore be a challenge to commit any further subsequent crimes there.
That’s a relief, all 3 of those for me are USA, USA, and USA, and so that’s what I applied with and what I refreshed my documents with; but I really started wondering if I had somehow severely misinterpreted my old lawyer’s instructions back in 2022 and truly screwed myself. I sent my new lawyer a somewhat alarmed email about it before I saw these replies, so I guess he and I will find out which type of idiot I am.
do we need to translate the no criminal record? because in AIMA translation is not required for English, French or Spanish.
I would recommend translating any foreign language documents into Portuguese, for two reasons:
- the official requirements have not changed, as far as I know, it was only some verbal update from AIMA;
- Ok, AIMA may now accept your foreign document in e.g. French. What happens next with your case? Could this be just added to the tray labelled ‘to be processed by our one and only certified French-speaking resource who has an SLA of 15 years’?
you do not need to translate any records that are in Portuguese, Spanish, French or English
Seems we’re in the same boat — mine just has five more countries on the list, my spouse has fewer. Hong Kong’s straightforward: apostilles are pricey but done in three days (I can share my notary and apostille contacts). China requires a personal visit to the district office for an instant certificate, then about 15 days for Portuguese translation and apostille through agencies — they handle everything except the original with the QR code, which needs physical handling.
@richn4 @TommyReine Gents, it might be worthwhile checking with your agent and ask whether Shenzhen police allows people to request police records on their app now.
For Beijing, I used to physically go to the police station with my ID, and they would print out the record (with the QR code) on the spot and stamp it. As of Jan 2025, the whole thing could be done using their app. The pdf with electronic stamp was accepted by the 公证处 I used in Beijing, who sent it to the Foreign Ministry to get apostiled as before.
This is a different Hong Kong to the one I know then 
.
If you’re not in the territory then you have to get certified finger prints done by your local police (somehow, here in Portugal, if they will do this) to accompany your remote application for a police certificate along with a request from Portugal certifying it’s for a visa application or similar because they do not supply police certificates to just anyone. There’s also a strange rigmarole where they will only send the completed certificate directly to the receiving authorities in Portugal so you have no visibility or control over the process. We went through it when we were in HK applying for the original GVs and even being in the territory it was awful (during Covid) involving the PT consulate in Macau making the request and employing a lawyer in Macau with power of attorney. It didn’t require an additional apostille and as you never have the thing in your hands. The consulate in Macau stamped it or something. Millennium Bank did require an Apostille on my signatures to open the bank account remotely and I had some insane quotes from notaries there for each and every one of the many signatures until I found one notary who didn’t want to fleece me who bundled them all together into a stapled document and charged me for just one.
Sorry I opened a can of worms asking if “criminal records, from everywhere you’ve lived as an adult” is a new thing
@tkrunning - the above 10-ish posts are all useful info for people applying for Citizenship. Could you please move them to a new topic dedicated to “criminal records required for PT Nationality applications” because they’d be buried in this nigh-1600 post thread.
The Decree also seems to now be published - see “2025-11-05 | Decreto (Publicação)” at https://www.parlamento.pt/ActividadeParlamentar/Paginas/DetalheIniciativa.aspx?BID=315160
Artigo 6(11) - criminal records, from everywhere you’ve lived as an adult 
- Proof of the absence of a final conviction, with a sentence of imprisonment of two years or more, as referred to in paragraph 1(f), shall be provided by means of criminal record certificates issued:
a) By the competent Portuguese authorities;
b) By the competent authorities of the country of birth, the country of nationality and the countries where the person has resided, provided that they have resided there after reaching the age of criminal responsibility.
Haha yeah, I had to send my current and former passport to China for a background check for my PT nationality application (I wasn’t born in China but I worked there for several years). It was weird and nerve-racking, but I used a local agent that handled it efficiently, including apostille. Happy to provide the name in DM if anyone needs.
The Chinese police record I submitted with my GV application (and a second time for the Jan 2025 “refresh”) looks like the following:
- Page 1: in Chinese, from the police, saying this person committed no crime from date xxx until date yyy. This page used to be done at a police station, with a wet-ink red stamp. Now at least in Beijing, I don’t have to make a trip to the police station anymore—I just get the pdf using their official app, and send it to the notary, who prints it out using a color printer. (Shenzhen is usually ahead of Beijing on these things.)
- Page 2: in Chinese, from the notary, attesting that page 1 is real.
- Page 3: Portuguese translation of page 1, done by the notary’s office.
- Page 4: Portuguese translation of page 2, done by the notary’s office.
The notary’s office sends all four pages (glued together in a booklet of sort) to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, who puts the apostille stamp on the back of page 4. The notary’s office aka 公证处 charges for their certification + the Portuguese translation + handling the apostille. Notary is a regulated business in China: price lists are published each year, and they are not allowed to overcharge the desperate.
Can this be done without a handler, with one half-day trip to China from Hong Kong or other places in Asia, without mailing your passport to anybody?
Answer is yes. Even if one doesn’t have to go to the police station anymore, the notary’s office still requires one in-person interaction, to see my ID and get my signature. Once the notary’s office gets the “booklet” back with the apostille from the Foreign Ministry, they can send it to you via SF Express, paid by the recipient (you scan the SF slip before leaving their office, put in your address, and pay—they don’t want to create unnecessary foot traffic from you to their office a second time)
Can this be done entirely from abroad, with no trip to China at all? I asked the notary’s office before. They said I could basically authorise my mom or any person by leaving her 1) my Chinese ID, and 2) writing a one-sentence authorisation; the signature does not need to be witnessed or notarised—fraud is unlikely because the person authorised by me has my actual ID. Now if you are a foreigner,
- replace [my mom] with [your paid agent/handler who is not a licensed notary], and
- replace [my Chinese ID] with [whatever old/new foreign passport / your old Chinese residency card they may require]
All big GV law firms have a lot of Chinese clients, many of whom live outside mainland China. So it shouldn’t be hard to get contacts for 2-3 handlers and compare prices.
Note: a place like Shenzhen might be more flexible than rest of China: some notaries might allow a photocopy of your passport + a video call with you to show them your passport, rather than requiring you to mail your passport to a handler). Only a reputable notary’s office / a handler with a lot of cases in Shenzhen / rest of Canton can confirm.
Mr. Wang’s description is excellent for Chinese ID holders (身份证) or Foreign Permanent Residents, who can access most services online. However, foreigners residing/resided on other visa types face different requirements—they only have passport visas and cannot use WeChat mini-programs for certificates but needs a physical presence with a passport in hand or an Authenticated POA by the chinese embassy with the original passport with an agent.
For police clearance certificates, foreigners must present their original passport at the police station in each district where they’ve resided. Having lived in multiple cities means obtaining multiple certificates, all requiring apostille processing.
Fortunately, reputable Taobao agents now streamline this process. I used a highly-rated service with excellent results: simply send PDFs of your QR-verified certificates and passport copy, pay through Taobao’s secure escrow, and receive apostilled documents within weeks. My PDFs arrived first, followed by FedEx delivery to Portugal.
While China’s administrative processes have become more accessible, foreigners must navigate current regulations differently than citizens.