Red, White and Tulips

Until yesterday I had never heard of the concept of Apostilles or double legalization, but if I’m not careful I will soon be an expert.

Apparently, if you “want to use a document from Canada in the Netherlands, you must first have it legalised by the Canadian authorities. Then you must have it legalised by a Dutch representative in Canada.” Do you know what that means? Neither did I.

Here’s the thing, I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means I have been through a LONG and very involved immigration process in the past. And yet, I have never heard of anything like this.

Since my husband and I were both born in Canada and we got married in Canada, we had to go through the Canadian legalization process. Because our daughter was born in Texas, we did the apostille process for her documentation.

Legalization of Canadian documents – the latest details and requirements can be found here. But here is a short version:

1. Have it legalized by Canadian authorities and then by a Dutch representative in Canada.
2. Document must be original and complete long-form documents.
3. Document are first legalized by Global Affairs Canada (the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the government of the Northwest Territories or one of the five Canadian provinces that provide document legalization services: Alberta (AB), British Columbia (BC), Manitoba (MB), Ontario (ON) and Prince Edward Island (PEI).
4. It is not fast – as of June 1, 2022, the processing time was 65 business days. This means you shouldn’t even bother to check on the status until 65 days have passed. Our documents took a full eight weeks.
5. Once Canada has signed the documents, they forward them to the Dutch Embassy for review and then finally back to me. The whole process took about 10 weeks.

Legalization of Texas documents – the latest details and requirements can be found here. But here is a short version:

1. You can submit documents in person or by mail to the office of the Secretary of State in Austin. In theory, you can get them back the same day if you apply in-person, depending on the number of other people trying to do the same.
2. We opted to complete the process by mail and it only took one week from the time we sent it until the time we received the completed version back. The state does currently say to allow at least 25 business days for requests received by mail, but this was not my experience.

With all of our documents authenticated, it was time to apply for our visas and immigration clearances.