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happeningthang · Joined: 08 Oct 2003 Posts: 117

Hey all -

In Jiangsu and elsewhere - there are some new requirements to get the Foreign Experts invitation letter needed for your Z visa.

One of them is that new candidates have to get their degrees authenticated by their local Chinese consulate.

Basically a three tiered process -
1) Get your university registrar or Notary Public to stamp a copy of the degree
2) Get your government agency who oversee travel documents to stamp again
3) Bring it to your local Chinese consulate for their stamp

All pretty straightforward.

One massive problem being that in at least one Chinese consulate - they refuse to authenticate copies and will only do so for original documents.

This means a new teacher's original degree would need to stamped with up to three sets of various seals and signatures and would end up looking like a well used passport page.

I hear some consulates will authenticate copies - others wont.

Sydney, Australia is one that wont apparently.

Has anyone else run into this problem? What did you do?

Listerine · Joined: 15 Jun 2014 Posts: 340

That sucks - having been said most Australian univeristies offer replacement degree copies for around 30 bucks. Is it worth getting a new copy (assuming it won't have big "COPY ONLY" stamps all over it), using it for the visa process and keeping the original unharmed?

OhBudPowellWhereArtThou · Joined: 02 Jun 2015 Posts: 1168 Location: Since 2003

"Get your government agency who oversee[sic] travel documents to stamp again..."

On the Federal level in the U.S., that would be the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs. That's the organ that issues passports.

To contact it by email to get the address, go to this website:

http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/contact.html

There's a contact portal at that site. In all likelihood, nobody will know anything about it if you are the first to contact the Department of State.

wawaguagua · Joined: 10 Feb 2013 Posts: 190 Location: China

I'm still trying to figure out what this means for those of us already in China with a residence permit who want to renew our contracts for the same school or transfer our residency to a new school. Do we need to have our degrees authenticated as well? Any insight would be greatly appreciated - I'm not planning to return to my country between contracts so I'd like to have time to figure out how to deal with this while I still have plenty of time. Otherwise, I don't want to waste time and money figuring out how to authenticate my degree by proxy for no reason.

OhBudPowellWhereArtThou · Joined: 02 Jun 2015 Posts: 1168 Location: Since 2003

wawaguagua · Joined: 10 Feb 2013 Posts: 190 Location: China

OhBudPowellWhereArtThou · Joined: 02 Jun 2015 Posts: 1168 Location: Since 2003

According to the State Department's website, we Americans need to get our degrees authenticated by a local notary, the county, and then the state before the federal level? That's certainly a pain in the ass... Thanks for the information. I guess it's just my degrees and not my TEFL certificate that needs to be authenticated...

I'm still not clear on whether any of this is actually necessary for me. It seems to apply if you're getting a Z visa but if I already have a residence permit I don't need to apply for a Z visa at all. Also, I haven't heard anything from my FAO, but Xinjiang's the type of place where I wouldn't find this out until I actually walked into the Bureau of Public Safety on the day I'm supposed to renew my residence permit. I wish this was all spelled out somewhere.

That's right, that is the order in which one is asked to have the degrees apostillized, but I'm not sure if the U.S. governments really care which government "organ" apostillizes it first. It shouldn't matter.

I found a service online that engages in this activity. I've never used it, but it's worth contacting the outfit.

https://apostille.us/Documents/apostille.shtml

or [email protected]

Also, various states actually have their apostillization services listed online. The trick is to find out what the state agency calls itself.

wawaguagua · Joined: 10 Feb 2013 Posts: 190 Location: China

OhBudPowellWhereArtThou · Joined: 02 Jun 2015 Posts: 1168 Location: Since 2003

When you say that the government doesn't care about the order, do you mean that one could skip the local government levels and directly authenticate at the federal level first?

I don't see why it would matter, but you never know. I'm only guessing. I'd contact The Department of State in Washington, D.C. to be sure.

I had all of my documents apostilled over a decade ago, so I haven't stayed abreast of the requirements.