![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Moving to another country: Apostille Stamp
Jul. 6th, 2025 07:06 pmMy husband, myself, and our 4-year-old poodle have safely relocated from the USA to the Netherlands.
I promised to detail aspects of our journey, for those curious about moving themselves: How does the process work? What is required? I hope to have enough time and energy to write more posts on this topic, because I feel it's important, and in fact urgent for many of us tagged as minorities (e.g.: you're not heterosexual, or you're not white, or you believe in the scientific method, etc).
This post is about something called the Apostille Stamp (pronounced: "app-uh-STEEL").
If you're American by birth, you possess a birth certificate. If you're married, you also possess a marriage certificate. These are important documents, yes? They prove your date of birth, and who you're legally married to. You need these documents to register for citizenship in foreign countries, and do other citizen magic: acquire insurance, get a driver's license, prepare a legally-binding will, etc.
However! By default, these American certificates are not recognized in other countries. Your default birth cerficate effectively does not prove your identity; your marriage is not valid outside of the USA. This applies even to the original documents; they are as useless as a copy of the original would be.
The only way to validate these certificates for other countries, is to get something called an Apostille Stamp. Scroll down to the list of Contracting States: If any of these 127 countries sound like desirable long-term destinations, then you'll want to get the Apostille Stamp on your certificates. The stamp instantly makes your certificates valid in every other country on this crazy-long list. You can just show the stamped document to government officials there, and they'll say "okay", and you're golden.
Let me say this up front: Given how the United States federal government is being dismantled from inside-out, and how multitudes of people are scrambling to exit the USA, I recommend getting your documents stamped with the Apostille as soon as possible. In this post, I'll repeat this idea several times, because if you're entertaining the idea of moving to another country, and you're thinking you can "wait" and "see what happens" regarding the paperwork, you will run out of time.
Stop lying to yourself with phrases like, "I'm sure things will work themselves out."
You will need a certified birth certificate to get the stamp. Is your birth certificate certified? If you don't know, then the answer is most likely: no, it is not.
In my case, I mailed my birth certificate to get the apostille stamp, only to learn that the certificate itself was uncertified, "too old", and the original recorder's signature wasn't "in the system". This was expensive (I paid for overnight delivery and return), but also a big waste of time. You can fix all these problems by obtaining a certified birth certificate:
Contact the Recorder's Office, in the county where you were born. In my case, this was Santa Cruz County, California. (The phone number on the Recorder's website always dumped me into voicemail, with no callbacks. After calling other numbers at the same building, someone picked up and transferred me to a friendly human at the Recorder's Office. Be persistent!)
The Recorder's Office should have a copy of your birth certificate on file. In my case, they were able to confirm this over the phone. Each state has different fees when ordering certified copies, but it wasn't too expensive (mine was around $45 for 2 copies). As it turns out, the Santa Cruz Recorder's Office doesn't deal with orders directly, they use third-party vendors to manage the orders and shipping.
Allow me to kindly-but-firmly recommend that you order two certified copies of your birth certificate, maybe more. There may be times when you'll send one copy off for processing somewhere, and you'll want to possess a spare.
More importantly, each state has different processing times. The third-party vendor in Santa Cruz was fast (a few days), other states may be slower.
Yes, if they offer expedited shipping, you should absolutely pay for it. Jump to the head of the queue, whenever possible.
Seriously, if you don't have certified copies of your birth certificate, order these now. Only a certified copy can receive the apostille stamp.
Documents can only be stamped with an apostille in the state where they were issued. This typically happens at the state capitol, in the Secretary of State Notary's office.
Normally you would mail your certificate(s) to the Notary's office, and include payment, and pre-paid postage so the completed documents can be mailed back to you.
You can also achieve same-day processing if you show up in person. We drove our marriage and birth certificates to Oregon's capitol (Salem). They successfully stamped the marriage certificate (we were married in Portland), but informed us that our birth certificates needed to be stamped by our birth states: California (me) and South Carolina (husband).
Since I wasted time with a non-certified birth certificate which was "too old", I didn't have sufficient days left to await processing by mail to-and-from the capitol of Calfornia, Sacramento. Originally the website for the Sacramento Notary's Office claimed the processing time by mail was 3 days. By the time I had a certified birth certificate in hand, that estimate had increased to 5 days. (Hmm, are many other Americans suddenly lining up to use this service?)
I ended up booking a same-day flight from Portland to Sacramento, just to get my two birth certificates stamped with the apostille. This ended up being a nice day trip, but at the expense of a good night's sleep from the early flight, missing a full day of potential packing, and nearly $1,000 for the airfare. :(
Don't be like me, and don't delay until the last minute, especially if processing times are creeping ever-longer: get the apostille stamp now.
The apostille itself isn't too exciting: it's a metallic seal, and an extra piece of paper stapled to the original document, and a stamp spanning both papers. Tearing the pages apart renders the apostille invalid.
I know, this stuff is really inconvenient, and it costs money. Even worse, you may have to do some web-research, and find ways to contact government offices, and crap like that. Wouldn't you rather spiral in a vortex of ADHD doom-scrolling? Or numb yourself with Assassin's Creed, or whatever the kids are playing now?
I strongly encourage anyone who's remotely interested in exiting the USA to take this seriously. Please, stop what you're doing, and get certified birth certificates, with apostille stamps. Government services like Recorder's Offices and Notaries should be considered at-risk at this moment in time, and are likely already understaffed. As the power structure of the federal government lurches towards dictatorship, these services could be stripped away entirely, without warning.
I'm not a refugee, but I imagine it's much easier to find another home with an apostille stamp, than to be suddenly relocated as a refugee due to a fascist takeover.
Seriously, get certified birth certificates. Get apostille stamps. These documents are required for citizenship, in 126 other excellent countries as of 2025. Ignore this advice at your own peril.
If we had known this information, and acted sooner, then we could have saved much grief and stress, especially in the harrowing days leading up to our final flight out of the USA.
Do you want more posts about exiting the USA? Let me know what topics I should rant about.
I promised to detail aspects of our journey, for those curious about moving themselves: How does the process work? What is required? I hope to have enough time and energy to write more posts on this topic, because I feel it's important, and in fact urgent for many of us tagged as minorities (e.g.: you're not heterosexual, or you're not white, or you believe in the scientific method, etc).
This post is about something called the Apostille Stamp (pronounced: "app-uh-STEEL").
If you're American by birth, you possess a birth certificate. If you're married, you also possess a marriage certificate. These are important documents, yes? They prove your date of birth, and who you're legally married to. You need these documents to register for citizenship in foreign countries, and do other citizen magic: acquire insurance, get a driver's license, prepare a legally-binding will, etc.
However! By default, these American certificates are not recognized in other countries. Your default birth cerficate effectively does not prove your identity; your marriage is not valid outside of the USA. This applies even to the original documents; they are as useless as a copy of the original would be.
The only way to validate these certificates for other countries, is to get something called an Apostille Stamp. Scroll down to the list of Contracting States: If any of these 127 countries sound like desirable long-term destinations, then you'll want to get the Apostille Stamp on your certificates. The stamp instantly makes your certificates valid in every other country on this crazy-long list. You can just show the stamped document to government officials there, and they'll say "okay", and you're golden.
Let me say this up front: Given how the United States federal government is being dismantled from inside-out, and how multitudes of people are scrambling to exit the USA, I recommend getting your documents stamped with the Apostille as soon as possible. In this post, I'll repeat this idea several times, because if you're entertaining the idea of moving to another country, and you're thinking you can "wait" and "see what happens" regarding the paperwork, you will run out of time.
Stop lying to yourself with phrases like, "I'm sure things will work themselves out."
Certified Birth Certificate
You will need a certified birth certificate to get the stamp. Is your birth certificate certified? If you don't know, then the answer is most likely: no, it is not.
In my case, I mailed my birth certificate to get the apostille stamp, only to learn that the certificate itself was uncertified, "too old", and the original recorder's signature wasn't "in the system". This was expensive (I paid for overnight delivery and return), but also a big waste of time. You can fix all these problems by obtaining a certified birth certificate:
Contact the Recorder's Office, in the county where you were born. In my case, this was Santa Cruz County, California. (The phone number on the Recorder's website always dumped me into voicemail, with no callbacks. After calling other numbers at the same building, someone picked up and transferred me to a friendly human at the Recorder's Office. Be persistent!)
The Recorder's Office should have a copy of your birth certificate on file. In my case, they were able to confirm this over the phone. Each state has different fees when ordering certified copies, but it wasn't too expensive (mine was around $45 for 2 copies). As it turns out, the Santa Cruz Recorder's Office doesn't deal with orders directly, they use third-party vendors to manage the orders and shipping.
Allow me to kindly-but-firmly recommend that you order two certified copies of your birth certificate, maybe more. There may be times when you'll send one copy off for processing somewhere, and you'll want to possess a spare.
More importantly, each state has different processing times. The third-party vendor in Santa Cruz was fast (a few days), other states may be slower.
Yes, if they offer expedited shipping, you should absolutely pay for it. Jump to the head of the queue, whenever possible.
Seriously, if you don't have certified copies of your birth certificate, order these now. Only a certified copy can receive the apostille stamp.
Apostille Stamp
Documents can only be stamped with an apostille in the state where they were issued. This typically happens at the state capitol, in the Secretary of State Notary's office.
Normally you would mail your certificate(s) to the Notary's office, and include payment, and pre-paid postage so the completed documents can be mailed back to you.
You can also achieve same-day processing if you show up in person. We drove our marriage and birth certificates to Oregon's capitol (Salem). They successfully stamped the marriage certificate (we were married in Portland), but informed us that our birth certificates needed to be stamped by our birth states: California (me) and South Carolina (husband).
Since I wasted time with a non-certified birth certificate which was "too old", I didn't have sufficient days left to await processing by mail to-and-from the capitol of Calfornia, Sacramento. Originally the website for the Sacramento Notary's Office claimed the processing time by mail was 3 days. By the time I had a certified birth certificate in hand, that estimate had increased to 5 days. (Hmm, are many other Americans suddenly lining up to use this service?)
I ended up booking a same-day flight from Portland to Sacramento, just to get my two birth certificates stamped with the apostille. This ended up being a nice day trip, but at the expense of a good night's sleep from the early flight, missing a full day of potential packing, and nearly $1,000 for the airfare. :(
Don't be like me, and don't delay until the last minute, especially if processing times are creeping ever-longer: get the apostille stamp now.
The apostille itself isn't too exciting: it's a metallic seal, and an extra piece of paper stapled to the original document, and a stamp spanning both papers. Tearing the pages apart renders the apostille invalid.
But Why Should I Lift a Finger
I know, this stuff is really inconvenient, and it costs money. Even worse, you may have to do some web-research, and find ways to contact government offices, and crap like that. Wouldn't you rather spiral in a vortex of ADHD doom-scrolling? Or numb yourself with Assassin's Creed, or whatever the kids are playing now?
I strongly encourage anyone who's remotely interested in exiting the USA to take this seriously. Please, stop what you're doing, and get certified birth certificates, with apostille stamps. Government services like Recorder's Offices and Notaries should be considered at-risk at this moment in time, and are likely already understaffed. As the power structure of the federal government lurches towards dictatorship, these services could be stripped away entirely, without warning.
I'm not a refugee, but I imagine it's much easier to find another home with an apostille stamp, than to be suddenly relocated as a refugee due to a fascist takeover.
Seriously, get certified birth certificates. Get apostille stamps. These documents are required for citizenship, in 126 other excellent countries as of 2025. Ignore this advice at your own peril.
If we had known this information, and acted sooner, then we could have saved much grief and stress, especially in the harrowing days leading up to our final flight out of the USA.
Do you want more posts about exiting the USA? Let me know what topics I should rant about.
