The latest in a series of authentications I need to get a Chinese work visa
FedEx today brought me another step closer to obtaining my new work visa to teach English in China. This is the authentication from the State of New Jersey validating the signature of the notary public who validated the signature of the university registrar who attested that the copy of my diploma which I had supplied is a true and authentic copy.
Did you get all that? I'll explain it a bit later.
Now I have the documents I need to submit, using a visa agency, for final authentication and approval from the Chinese consulates. Two consulates, because one document (non-criminal record report) comes from Kentucky and has to go to Washington, DC, and the other (my university diploma) comes from New Jersey and has to go to New York City.
Then, once I have those validations, I can email scanned copies of the documents to my anxious employer in Zhengzhou, China, to get a preliminary work permit, which I need to apply for the actual work visa.
So much red tape, it could qualify for the Monday color challenge.
I've been chronicling the many steps I've had to take to obtain a new Chinese work (Z) visa, but here's a quick summary.
In my case, I had to provide a true and authentic copy of my university diploma and a report showing I had no criminal record. (The later is rather ironic, considering I've been living in China for the last nine years.)
- Each document has to be signed in front of a notary public.
- Notarized Kentucky documents must be validated by the county clerk, who attests the notary's commission and signature are in force and correct. This step is not necessary for New Jersey documents.
- Next, the state government needs to validate the previous signatures and commissions.
- Kentucky documents must further be authenticated by the US Department of State. Again, NJ documents are exempt from this step.
- Then, these documents must be delivered by hand (not by mail) to the appropriate consulate of People's Republic of China, where they will get a very official looking certificate in Chinese saying they have been approved for further processing.
- The Chinese employer will use these documents to apply for a preliminary work permit, which will be sent to the prospective employee for his or her work visa application.
- Upon receiving the work visa, the employee can then finally book a flight to China and report to work.
As you can imagine, all of this takes a ridiculous amount of time if you have to rely on the postal service or FedEx to shuttle these documents around. In my case, it's been eight weeks, because I mistakenly submitted my diploma to a Kentucky notary for validation. I learned later that the diploma has to be authenticated in the home state of the university, so I had to send it out again to obtain the very important document you see above.
Most of the government offices have turned the documents around in 1-2 days, so I can't complain about that. But the US State Department took almost two weeks to return their authentication to me.
Anyway, now I am at step 5. Since I am now in Colorado visiting my son, it will be more cost-effective to use a visa agency to deliver the documents to the DC and NYC consular offices -- for a combined fee of $286. My future employment will be in the hands of some anonymous office person, who I hope will find my documents all in order and will affix the Chinese seal of approval to them. This part worries me more, because rejection would mean going back to step 1 and another few weeks of delay.
Classes at my future university employment begin in two weeks. I doubt I'll be there in time.