The client, born during the tumultuous period of time when Indonesia gained its
independence from the Netherlands, needed to get a certified copy of her birth
certificate to apply for residency. A simple request to the Netherlands should have
solved the problem, right?
Wrong. The Netherlands denied the request because the client had become an American
citizen. Essentially, our client was told to go get it from Indonesia.
Because she had no family or friends in Indonesia, we hired an Indonesian private
investigation firm. The investigators had to go in person to three locations and
manually search for the right volume where the six-decade-old birth registration could
be found. It took two months to find it. All we had left was to get, it and it was
free!
Wrong again. Indonesia does not issue apostilles. It uses the old and tedious
authentication method called legalization. Our Canadian clients are painfully aware of
this process, as Canada still uses it. Worse yet, at that time Costa Rica did not have
a consular office in Jakarta as it does now, so we would have to do Third Country
Legalization.
Once the Indonesian government authenticated the birth certificate, the investigator
took it to, you guessed it, the Canadian consulate in Jakarta. Then it was FedEx’d to
our document processing agent in Ottawa, Canada. Once in Ottawa, the document went to
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Costa Rican Consulate. Our agent next FedEx’d
the document to our office in San Jose to get its final signature at Casa Amarilla.
Now fully legalized, we filed it with Migration.
The moral of the story is to be patient and creative in finding a solution to the
problem. It took us close to five months, 53 emails, and almost $1,700 paid by our
client to get this one document. Fortunately, this was a very unusual case. Getting a
copy of a birth certificate usually costs about $10.
I am happy to report the client is not only a resident but she is now a permanent
resident!
written by Javier Zavaleta of Residency in Costa Rica
article first appeared in AM Costa Rica 3/14/18