the United States accepts foreign diplomas for a skilled worker or employment visa application only when they have been authenticated through a recognized apostille chain. The exact procedure depends on whether the United States is a member of the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention and on the type of document presented. We process your university diploma for clients filing into the United States every week, and the steps below reflect the actual current requirements rather than the generic "apostille and translate" advice typical online articles give.
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 university diploma 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 university diploma 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 diploma 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 university diploma so that the work-visa decision-maker can verify it on first inspection.