If you are preparing your birth certificate for a skilled worker or employment visa application in the United States, the document must first carry an officially recognized apostille. Without it, the United States's receiving institutions — embassies, consulates, employers, universities or immigration officers — cannot legally verify that your record was issued by a competent authority. This page explains how the apostille works specifically for the United States, who issues it, what other steps usually accompany it, and how DoCertify handles the entire chain on your behalf.
Documents bound for the United States are authenticated through issuing-state Secretary of State for state-issued documents and the U.S. Department of State for federally-issued documents. Because both the United States and most likely the country where the document was issued are members of the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention, a single apostille certificate is sufficient — no embassy legalization is needed.
Standard turnaround for apostille of your birth certificate bound for the United States is 3–7 working days from the moment we receive the original document. Urgent processing is available in 24–48 hours for most countries of origin where the issuing authority offers expedited service.
No. The entire apostille chain is processed in the country where your birth certificate was issued, not in the United States. You only need to ship the original document to our processing office; the apostilled and translated package is then couriered to wherever you are.
Yes. The apostille we issue is performed by issuing-state Secretary of State for state-issued documents and the U.S. Department of State for federally-issued documents, the recognized authority for documents of this type. Receiving institutions in the United States — embassies, consulates, employers and immigration offices — verify the document through the same channel.
If your birth certificate is not in one of the United States's working languages, a sworn translation is normally required in addition to the apostille. We can add a certified translation as part of the same order.
Employers and skilled-worker visa officers in the United States sit on dozens of applications per week. A document chain that arrives correctly authenticated and translated the first time moves through the queue faster, while a chain with a missing step is set aside and often only flagged after weeks of waiting. We process your birth certificate so that the work-visa decision-maker can verify it on first inspection.