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If you are getting married in China, see Getting Married in China Documents to bring to interview The hukou is the Household Registry which contains the information used to produce the white books. Notarial Certificate of Birth Most confusion with the Chinese Notarial Documents is with the Notarial Certificate of Birth. Prior to 1996, birth certificates were not issued at birth. A notarial certificate with translation must be generated from the hukou. Note that if the applicant is no longer in their parents' hukou, they may need to provide other certified evidence to indicate the parents' names. A notarial certificate is NOT necessarily a translation of an existing document. It is a statement BY the notarial official based on the evidence you present as to the facts of the matter. In other words, the Notarial Certificate of Birth will be generated ON THE SPOT at the Notarial Office, or Gong Zheng Chu (公证处). If they demand that you produce a "birth certificate" for them to certify, you may need to get creative, such as by going back to the PSB to get a certified statement of the facts needed for the Notarial Certificate of Birth. If the applicant is no longer on their parents' hukou, they MAY need to go to the hometown PSB where they were originally registered. The notation on the notarial birth certificate is 出生公证书, or chu sheng gong zheng shu, which is what you need to ask for at the Gong Zheng Chu, or 公证处֤֤֤. A sample Notarial Certificate of Birth may be found at http://candleforlove.com/forums/topic/48295-chinese-essential-documents-white-books/?p=626052 Chinese Notarial Documents - see DOS China Reciprocity Schedule NOTE: If the link is broken, try http://travel.state.gov/ and search for "Reciprocity by Country" (they seem to change this periodically) Most of the documents needed can be obtained from one of China's Notarial Offices (Gong Zheng Chu, or 公证处֤֤). All Chinese documentation to be used abroad is processed through the notary offices and issued in the form of notarial certificates (known as "white books"). Notarial offices are located in all major Chinese cities and in rural county seats Google 上海公证处, substituting the name of your home city. The documents required are the GongZhengShu (公证书֤) ֤֤ or Notarial Certificate. Sample application for documents (your province or hukou may vary): https://bjfy.egongzheng.com/flagship/online//bid/notary.html?notaryCode=223 - or - https://www.gongzheng.gov.cn/article/315 A discussion of the huji (or hukou system can be found at Hukou System. Chinese residents should go to their hukou for all notarial documents (birth, divorce, and/or single certificate, and police records). For the police record, one obtained at the hukou will cover all of China. A notarial document will be in the standard white notarial booklet, have an official red seal, an English translation, and an attestation to the true translation. Note that police records and single certificates are valid for one year from the date of notarization. Others are valid indefinitely. Marriage certification for I-130 or K-3 must be in the same format. Only ONE is needed. Your choice as to which. Marriage is bilateral. If ANY document is unobtainable or the document is unavailable, you should submit a statement of WHY it is unobtainable, and what effort you made to obtain it. Sample letter of attestation (for a non-professional translation of a non-required document (such as a relationship letter): What police certificates do I need and how do I get them - http://www.avvo.com/...w-do-i-get-them It is usually not necessary to submit police certificates for a stay in the United States. On Obtaining an "Unobtainable" Police Certificate (China) - Unobtainable police certificate from Beijing, China (a Visa Journey topic) Police Certificates for Foreigners Living in China An excellent write-up on this from the Gary Chodorow law firm - https://lawandborder.com/china-police-certificates/ If you need a police certificate for any reason from having lived in China, it may be possible to obtain one from the local PSB Entry and Exit Bureau. You will need a Chinese work permit and a letter from your employer. Contact the PSB folks for the details of what they need. A "crazy mixed-up process - mission accomplished" - a detailed account on Visa Journey You WILL NOT need one for the US visa process, unless you are notified otherwise. This thread from 2016 covers the (ultimately successful) efforts by a couple of foreigners - Police (criminal record) report process is broken from the British embassy http://ukinchina.fco...-other-services A report on their services Jan., 2016 - http://candleforlove.com/forums/topic/48344-translation-of-documents/?p=626584 Cost of Notarial Certificates One member reported this in 2013. Cost varies, of course, by province, and over time. Getting Married in China

I'm going through immigration process with my wife and daughter (who are both Japanese citizens). As we all know, the folks in GZ want to see "criminal record" reports covering the time we have been in China. As I understand it, the final reports are supposed to come from the Notarization office, who issue "white book" documents. But, in order to issue the "white book", the Notarization Office first wants to know that you have no criminal record. So, where to get criminal record info?? It seems impossible. The Chinese police won't issue any documentation to you unless you're Chinese, and (recently) neither will the immigration authorities. The Notarization office folks know this, and told me to get documentation from my employer (to cover my wife), and from my daughter's school. The school worked out OK, but I can't persuade my employer to issue any statement about my wife. The Notarization office just want a statement saying "we're not aware of any criminal activity" (i.e. "we don't know"), but I can't even get my employer to do this. Anybody else had this problem (in Shanghai)? Any suggestions ?

Preparing to get our marriage certificates notarized into the famous "white book" for I-130. I have read the sticky post in detail, all is clear, except one point. In China, you actually receive two official marriage certificates (red books), one for the husband and one for the wife. Granted, the information is nearly identical, just who is listed first. When I take these in to get notarized should they treat these as separate documents and give me back two white books, one for each. Or do they consolidate these into a single white book? Any help is much appreciated. -Morgan

My mom was born in GuangDong, China in 1929 and moved to Hong Kong in 1951. NVC asked for birth certificate which we were not able (or don't know how) to obtain from the Chinese authority since record keeping back in 1920s was very poor. Most of her childhood friends have already passed away or lost connection with. Can anyone please help on how to obtain the birth certificate for her to fulfill the NVC civil document request? Thank you so much.

Hi? I was born after 1996, so I have a standard green medical certificate of birth, however we are having trouble getting notarial certificate of birth, because my mother is not available and they asked for her ID. Is the medical certificate of birth alone enough for i130 and i485 application? thanks!

Has anybody did the interview without notarized copy of birth? I e-mailed the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) Office in Guangzhou, China. and asked them. They told me her passport was good enough. Thank you for your inquiry to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) Office in Guangzhou, China. Our office can provide you with the following general information, which does not constitute legal advice. For legal advice or for assistance in preparing immigration forms, please contact a legal representative. A notarized copy of your wife’s birth certificate is not required. A copy of the biographic page of her passport is sufficient. Please provide notarized copies of your marriage certificate, with English translations. Please bring the original CRBA certificates for your children. We will view the originals and make copies then return the originals to you. Sincerely, Guangzhou Field Office U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services | U.S. Department of Homeland Security I was reading the interview check list and it states she need one. Now has anybody on this forum interviewed with out it?

Hi! I'm wondering about the translation of documents like birth certificate, police records, etc.. I think I had read somewhere that it needed to be done by some sort of translation service as opposed to my fiancee translating them herself. If this is the case, what services would you all recommend? Also, I just noticed the translation needs to be notarized. Where do I get this done? Last time I talked about notarization, my fiancee was very confused as to where one would do that. Thanks for the help everyone! Best, Matthew

My wife and I submitted the I-130 petition and I-130a at the Beijing Embassy recently. I had assumed that all Beijing would do would be to check to see if the forms had been properly filled in and the necessary documents and copies had been included. However, they retained the originals of the marriage certificates and divorce certificates (Chinese), and told us that they would be investigating our case, and that we might be asked to provide more evidence to prove the genuineness of our marriage, and might even be interviewed. This was a surprise to me, as I had assumed that sort of thing would only be done by the Guangzhou consulate. My wife had previously been married to another American citizen, and he began the immigration visa process which was not completed. I notice that the new edition of the I-130 petition (p.5, Part 4, #10) does ask "Has anyone else ever filed a petition for the beneficiary?"...which wasn't asked before, if I remember correctly. So evidently the US government is being more careful of such cases...something I have worried about for years. When I asked what the process would involve, I was given a very vague answer...really no answer at all. And I was told that the process might take up to three months to complete before the petition was either accepted and sent on to Guangzhou or denied. Can anyone tell me what Beijing will do as part of its "investigation", and whether it is SOP to retain marriage and divorce documents? I have asked in another thread if I had cause to worry that my wife's previous marriage to another American would cause problems, but didn't receive much response. The fact is that her previous marriage, on the surface at least, does seem sort of shady. Is the retention of the marriage and divorce documents a sign that we will in fact have a problem, or is it just standard procedure? Thanks in advance for your help.

I'm the USC, I'm a woman. A couple years ago, right aftery husband and I were married, I changed my last name to his while I was visiting home. I thought it would be another good step to proving our marriage was the real deal. This has led to nothing but trouble. Since then I have had to renew my passport, which shows my new last name. I renewed my passport in the Shanghai US embassy, and also got a notarized letter from the embassy stating my old passport and new passport are the same person. My Chinese marriage certificate has my maiden name. Today upon trying to get the notarized copy (white book) of my marriage certificate, the officer wouldn't accept this notarized letter from the US embassy, even though I've used it to renew my visa multiple times. We were told to contact the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. They told me I need to return to America and go to the Chinese embassy there to get a paper that can be notarized by the Chinese government. My husband's marriage certificate can be notarized without a problem. Do I absolutely need my marriage certificate to be notarized as well?

Hello everyone! We are still waiting for approving our i-130 petition, but i am already planning my documents for the interview. And i was thinking about one thing - couple years ago i had my documents (birth certificate and so on) translated (into English) and notirised in Russia. Will it be enough for the Embassy or shall i make additional translation in China? Kind regards, Natalia

Hello again community. I'm asking this because I want to know if it's common for administrative incompetence to get in the way of getting the visa for the spouse to go to America. My husband had his green card interview and everything seemed to go okay. According to my husband, he asked his interviewer if she needed the translations of all his police certificates and if everything was correct. She said she didn't need the translations, everything was correct, and the final words she said to him were "You're all set." Sounds like everything is good to go for the visa right? Well now, we get a letter saying he is unable to get the visa now because they need: -two new visa photos taken within the past 6 months -a notarized birth certificate -a notarized marriage certificate -a notarized police certificate (it is not specific whether this means a Chinese police certificate, even though we did all that needs to be done to get the white book and everything with it) -notarized English translations of marriage certificate and police certificates from both the Netherlands and Spain My husband brought all this stuff (and much much more) to the interview. His interviewer blew it off and acted like it was unnecessary, now we are here. We will try to call the embassy Monday to see what is going on. Would arguing this situation help and result in a "Sorry, just send what you have to us," or would it be better to just tediously gather up all these documents once more? I've read about administrative incompetence causing couples to not get the visa, but I would have never thought it would happen to us...

Hi, I gave CR1 visa interview at New Delhi, India embassy. After interview they said congratulations, you visa has been approved. When I went to pick up passport after 4 days, they gave me 221g mentioning that there is something wrong with China Police Certificate. Now our case is in administrative processing. My current police certificate is attached. Can someone please share screenshot of their police certificate (you can hide your personal information) so I can find what is wrong with police certificate i submitted.

Hi Sorry if this topic has been addressed before! Does the applicant need to bring a white book copy of his family hukou to the GUZ interview? And, Does the applicant need police record check certificates for each city he has lived in in China? Or just from his hometown? We have a white book translated official certificate that was issued for him in his home city, but he's also lived in 3 other cities in China - does he need anything from there? He's been living in Shanghai for the last 2 years, does he need one from here? (please God, no) Our Interview is in one week... Last Question: We didn't get an email confirming our interview time, but we have a screenshot of the confirmation page after we made the appointment on the website...can we just print this out?? Or should we print something from UStraveldocs.com? Thanks guys!

Hello! My wife and I are applying for green cards (I-485) and we need to submit a copy of her birth certificate. We have a one-page document that looks exactly like the sample document below, except: The title at the top is Gong Zheng Shu instead of Chu Sheng Gong Zheng Shu It doesn't have a number (like XO01836888) in the lower-left corner It has her information and photo, not somebody else's information and photo Is this sufficient for I-485 (along with a professional translation), or do we need to get a 4-page white booklet? How would we get the white booklet, given that we aren't in China and don't have family or friends in China who could take care of it for us? Thanks!

Hello community. Me (American) and my husband (Spanish) are both living and working in China and are in the process of doing DCF in Guangzhou. We already submitted the I-130 and my husband has already filled out the DS-260. Do I have to e-mail all the materials (I-864, police certificate, marriage certificate, etc.) to the NVC like the travel.state.gov website instructs? I just want to make sure because it is not that clear, and looking at other people's DCF experiences, nobody mentions the step of e-mailing materials to NVC. That makes me think they didn't do the e-mail part. My other question involves police certificates. Do I, the petitioner, have to get police certificates from China and USA also, or is that job only for the beneficiary? My final question involves the I-864. I want to make sure that the signature of my joint-sponsor has to be original and not a scanned a printed signature. Is this true? Does this mean my joint sponsor has to mail the I-864 and all documents physically to me? Thank you very much!

I was wondering when the original notarial certificate of birth (instead of a photocopy) is needed again once the VISA is approved, and if so, about how many are needed. I am in California and I have been checking online on different situation where it might be needed, but there seems to be none. What are some situations where it is needed again? Some situations I checked that I don't think the notarial certificate of birth is needed: Marriage Certificate, ID Card, SSN, Permanent Status, Driver's License, Passport. Thanks in advance.

I have seen the advice to get multiple copies of the Chinese White Books before you leave China. We may have one or two around but probably not enough..... The documents we need are our Chinese Marriage Certificate (married in Shenyang, Liaoning) and my wife's birth certificate (or really the info from her Hokou). My questions? If my wife has her Hokou and our certificate, any chance the Chinese consulate in NYC could do this? Does the office in Shenyang have to do our marriage certificate? I believe the birth certificate is done in the city of her Hokou which is different than her birth hometown? Luckily, my wife just updated her Hokou but unluckily I just found out we need these after she just came back from China? Any experience with this or are we going to have to get her family to help us out? Thanks in advance. Beachey.

I have been looking through the forum and several people have mentioned themselves or their spouses having a prior divorce. They mentioned to bring the divorce certificate to show them the previous marriage was terminated legally. There was never any mention of the certificate needing to be translated or notarized. In my case, my wife got divorced a few years ago. She has her divorce certificate, but it is only in Chinese. Do we need to get this translated and notarized? If so, does it matter where the translation/notarization is done? We live in Shanghai and her hometown is in Hunan. We already went back last week to get all of the White Books needed for filing. I will be filing the beginning of August in Beijing. Any help and information would be much appreciated! Thank you!

My fiancé and I have just started the K1 process. We mailed off the forms a few days ago. My question is since he had his name changed as a child (about 8 years old) will we need to show some sort of documentation regarding this name change? If so, I don't even know where we would go to get it. We did list his old name on the I-129F under the previously used names.

Greetings- We have finally scheduled our interview and are double-checking the instructions for paperwork to bring. In this set of instructions I see some things that I didn't find before in other places. We got the "white books" done a few months ago when home for the Chinese New Year, so I'm really hoping they don't need to be redone. In the Visa Instructions, it says this regarding the birth certificate, "The certificate must also indicate that the public office extracted the information from official records." I'm thinking this would be from the hukou. In my husband's notarized whitebook, I can't see anything that says where they got the information from, neither in the English or Chinese. Second, I just want to double-check that a notarization regarding his non-criminal record is good nation-wide. We don't need to get one from each city he has lived in, correct? Thanks so much! Cheers!

Hi all, I am partitioning my wife to immigrate to the US and currently I submitted the DS260 confirmation a few days ago. I want to get a head on some of the things we'll need and one of this is the police report. Now my wife is originally from ChongQing and we moved to Guangzhou for about 5 years now. Where should I get the police report from? From her home town CQ? Or here in GZ? Or both? Or doesn't matter? How long do the police reports lasts? I mean I don't want to get one, then it expires before I get a notice from the consulate that I can move ahead. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

First, I'm just going to say thank you to all the members on the board for explaining so many things so well. I've read a few other topics on this, which have been really helpful, but we've a (seemingly) insurpassable wall here. My wife was born in 1992, and where she lives in Qingdao they didn't produce birth certificates until 1994. I know what document we need for the interview and exactly what it looks like, the 顣When we went to the notorial office, they said we couldn't get a unless we had a birth certificate (even though we had her parents' ID cards, wedding certificate, and the hukouben). They told us to go the to get that. We went to two of them, one being her hukou, the other in the city. However at both of those we were told that her ڱ and all of her other documents were enough to prove her birth, and we couldn't get any kind of birth certification. We've made many calls to /notary offices and different paichusuo, and they say we can't possibly get the documentation we need in order to get that notarized document. Any body else with similar problems, and what did you do to get past them? I have a feeling this is just bureaucracy in China, but I'm worried if we can't get this if it will be an issue come time for my wife's interview and the final issuance of her visa. I also have a few other questions that I hope can be answered. In terms of notorized documents, I need (I don't know the English names, but I can explain them): 1) notorial certificate of birth 2) notorial certificate of criminal background check 3) notorial certificate of wedding certificate (hers) 4) notorial certificate of wedding certificate (mine) Am I missing anything there? Also, do I need to go in person to the. Guangzhou consulate to submit my application, and how do I set up that appointment? Do I need to have lived in China for 6 months to do DCF still? I heard you didn't. Becauese it's convenient for me to go at my 5 months and 20 plus days mark of being in China. On my travel visa I'm required to leave every 60 days, so I go to Hong Kong, spend the night, then fly back the next morning. Are my visa stamps enough proof for 6 months, if it is still needed? Thank you very much!

My son is a green card holder. He is going to apply immigrate visa for his wife. Based on the instruction of 1-130 , he needs to send his marriage certificate , I wonder if it's translate by himself or it must be translate officially . Thanks

I think this will probably be my last question for now, as I am winding down on all of the paperwork, and just having everything ready well before the time of petitioning for my wife even starts. Notarization/translation of beneficiary’s birth certificate Notarization/translation of beneficiary’s hukou Notarization/translation of beneficiary’s criminal background check Notarization/translation of beneficiary’s marriage certificate Notarization/translation of petitioner’s marriage certificate Notarization/translation of child(ren)’s birth certificateI know I am supposed to go to the GongZhengChu with my wife to get these documents (besides the police docs which can be picked up from any big gonganju, and the marriage certificates which we already have since we got married in China) So my questions: 1. Do we go to any old Gongzhengchu in the province (we live in the same province that she is from, just a different city about an hour north) to get these aforementioned documents, or do we have to go back to her hometown? 2. When we get these documents, do they come "pre-translated" or do we have to take it to get translated? If so, where? I think this is the last piece of the puzzle documents wise that we need to get down, then I think our "documents packets" for both the petitioning and the intake day/interview will be good to go. Thanks all.

Hello Community ! I see that the Chinese spouse Birth Certificate is now not required when filling out the I-130, according the guide section on this forum. Will we need one later on in the CR-1 process? Also what is the recommended number of translated notarized copies ( white books ) you all suggest for the divorce and marriage documents? What about the fees for these pre copy? How many days does it usually take to have them translated and notarized?