The documents to apostille before moving abroad are cheap, slow, and mostly perishable. An FBI background check costs $18 on the FBI’s own page. The State Department’s apostille on it costs $20 more and, by mail, takes up to five weeks from the day your envelope reaches Washington. Spain’s consulate in Los Angeles won’t accept the check once it’s six months old. Thailand’s consulate in the same city wants it issued within three months.
From a kitchen table in the US, that’s a to-do list.
From abroad, with an appointment already booked, the same $38 of paper can cost you the slot. Sometimes the whole application.
This guide covers the papers worth getting certified, apostilled and in some cases translated while you still have a US address, a US checkbook and a post office down the street. It’s checked against the FBI, the State Department and the consulate or immigration pages of seven countries, in September 2026.
Why it’s easier before you leave
Three things change the day you move.
Fingerprints. Inside the US, you request the check online and have your prints taken electronically at a participating post office. The FBI’s stated time for that is within 48 hours. From abroad, someone has to roll all ten fingers onto the paper card, form FD-1164, and you mail it to the FBI’s center in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The FBI then quotes about 10 days after the card arrives. A request sent entirely by mail is up to 15 days, plus mail time. FBI-approved channelers, private firms under contract with the FBI, can also take prints and submit them electronically.
The apostille. For a federal document like the FBI check, exactly one office can apostille it: the State Department’s Office of Authentications, using form DS-4194. Mailed requests go to a PO box in Sterling, Virginia. You pay by check or money order. The State Department’s instructions say check numbers must be over 100 and your name and address must be preprinted on the check. You include a prepaid return envelope, USPS or UPS, not FedEx.
The embassy can’t rescue you. A US embassy abroad, in Madrid or Mexico City, does notarial work at $50 per consular seal, and in countries that belong to the Apostille Convention the State Department points you to a local notary instead. The apostille on a federal document still comes only from Washington.
None of this is impossible from abroad. It’s slow, and every paper has a clock that starts the day it’s issued.
Documents to apostille before moving abroad, and who does each one
The rule is short. Federal documents go to the State Department. State documents go to the state that issued them.
| Document | Issued by | Apostilled by | Cost and time |
|---|---|---|---|
| FBI Identity History Summary | FBI | State Department, Office of Authentications | $18 for the check, $20 for the apostille; up to five weeks by mail, seven business days walk-in |
| Birth certificate | State or county vital records | Secretary of State of the state that issued it | Varies by state |
| Marriage certificate | County or state | The state that issued it | Varies by state |
| Divorce decree | Court | The state, after the court clerk certifies it | Varies by state |
A Texas birth certificate gets a Texas apostille, even if you’ve lived in Oregon for thirty years.
State fees vary. California, as one example, charges $20 per apostille, plus a $6 special handling fee for each different official’s signature when you apply in person, and its Los Angeles office does same-day service. California also shows the trap inside this step: its Secretary of State can only apostille a birth certificate signed by a county clerk, a county recorder or the State Registrar. If your copy carries another official’s signature, the county clerk has to certify it first, or you order a fresh certified copy. Check whose signature sits at the bottom before you pay for anything.
The walk-in option in Washington is for people traveling within two to three weeks: drop off Monday to Thursday, 7:30 to 9:00 a.m. Everyone else mails, and the five weeks start when the package reaches Washington, not the Virginia sorting facility.
Couples: each person needs their own FBI request and their own $18.
How recent is recent enough
Every office has its own clock, and some don’t print one. Here’s what the official pages say.
| Country and office | Criminal record | Other papers with a clock |
|---|---|---|
| Spain (Los Angeles, Washington, Miami) | FBI check, six months at most, federal apostille, sworn Spanish translation | Medical certificate within 90 days; family birth and marriage certificates issued in the last six months (Los Angeles) |
| Thailand (Los Angeles, O-A) | FBI certificate issued within three months | Medical certificate valid three months at most |
| Ecuador (retiree residence) | From your country of origin or wherever you lived in the last five years, apostilled and translated; valid 180 days from issue to your last entry | Pension letter, apostilled |
| Portugal (Newark, D7) | From your country of nationality or where you’ve lived more than a year, with a Hague apostille; no window printed | Proof of means for at least 12 months |
| Costa Rica (immigration directorate) | A federal check by name, ID number and fingerprints, apostilled; no window printed | Birth certificate, apostilled, translated by an official Costa Rican translator |
| Italy (Los Angeles, elective residence) | Not on the list | Marriage and children’s birth certificates if family comes; last two years of tax returns |
| Mexico (Houston, temporary resident) | Not on the list | Marriage or birth certificates for dependents; US certificates don’t need an apostille there |
Spain’s Washington consulate adds one more: if you’ve lived in any other country for more than 180 days in the last five years, you need that country’s criminal record too, apostilled.
Thailand has a twist. It joined the Apostille Convention on June 30, 2026, but according to the Hague Conference’s status table, it only takes effect there on February 28, 2027. Until then, an apostille isn’t the Thai route. Ask the consulate what it wants on the certificate.
Italy and Mexico skipping the FBI check doesn’t mean you should skip it. Permits get renewed. Offices change their lists. And if they change their minds, you’ll be ordering papers from another continent.
Run the clock backwards
Take Spain’s six months, about 26 weeks.
Say the FBI result comes back in two days. You mail it to the State Department, which takes up to five weeks after the package arrives, plus mail both ways. Then a sworn translator. Then the appointment.
More than five of your 26 weeks are gone before anyone translates a word, and that’s if nothing gets rejected. Do it from abroad, with a fingerprint card crossing the Atlantic twice, and I’d plan for the whole six months to feel short.
So you work backwards from the appointment date, one line per document, with the latest day each one can be ordered. For Spain I keep that as a free printable checklist, with a line for each document’s issue date. The full Spain file, consulate by consulate, is on the Spain visa page.
Translate after the apostille, not before. The apostille is part of the document the consulate reads, and you don’t want to pay a sworn translator twice.
Three mistakes that send a file back
“A state background check is fine.” Not for Spain. Its consulates want the FBI’s fingerprint-based check, and Los Angeles says in writing that a local apostille on it isn’t valid. It must be the federal one.
“The FBI will send it on to the State Department.” It won’t. The FBI’s instructions say not to include requests to forward your result for the apostille. You get it, then you send it on yourself.
“I’ll sort it out at the embassy once I’m there.” The embassy can notarize. It can’t apostille a US federal document, and state documents still go back to the state that issued them.
The honest downside
Some of this is money you’ll never need. Italy and Mexico don’t ask for the FBI check on the pages I read. A certificate ordered too early expires before the appointment, and you order it again. That’s the real cost of doing it in the US: a few duplicate fees.
The cost of doing it from abroad is time, and time is the one thing these files don’t give back. I’d take the duplicate fees.
What I’d have in the folder before the flight
- The FBI check with the federal apostille, dated as late as your visa timeline allows.
- Two certified copies of your birth certificate: one apostilled by the issuing state, one kept plain.
- Your marriage certificate, apostilled by the state that issued it, if a spouse is coming.
- A divorce decree, certified by the court clerk and apostilled by that state, if you’ve ever been divorced.
- Children’s birth certificates, the same way.
- A US checkbook with a few checks left, numbered over 100, and some prepaid USPS envelopes.
Number four isn’t on any of these lists for a single applicant. I’d still get it. Proving you’re free to marry, or that your name changed and why, is a question that tends to arrive years later, in a different office.
The checkbook sounds quaint. It’s how the State Department takes mailed payments.
Income floors for thirteen countries are on the retirement visa hub, and Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador and Colombia’s files are compared in Latin America retirement visas.