[bthomas9500]

Hi all,
I have a question about authentication. In my adoption manual it says that Birth Certificates should be "authenticated by the Chinese Consulate that serves the particular state" which would be New York since the document was issued in NJ.

For us, this is different than the state we live in, GA, which would go through the Houston Consulate. But when I went to the NY Consulate website it says that "Applicants who intend to mail above applications [authentications] should reside in the following consular districts of the Chinese Consulate in New York" Then it lists the states.

So, can someone please tell me if your documents get authenticated by the Consulate that serves the state that issued the document or the Consulate that serves the state you now live in.

Your help is greatly appreciated!
Brandy

[prechrswife]

We haven't made it to that point yet, but looking at the instructions from our agency, it looks like birth certificates are authenticated through the Secretary of State's office in the state where the certificate was issued. For example, since I am from Louisiana, I will have to send mine back to Louisiana for authentication, even though I live in Georgia. We will have to send dh's to Georgia.

[Sean&Shan]

You can have the Seal of the state put on right away (make sure you let them know your paperwork is going to China, they use different seals for different countries supposedly). When you are ready to turn your dossier in it will be sent to the consulate serving the states where you were born/married. For example, we live in Maryland and were married here so we will use the cosulate in DC. But our paperwork will also be sent to California and NewYork because of the states we were born.
We just went through this with our SW. We were told that because we have to go to 3 consulates that there is no way we can be DTC in Feb. So March DTC, here we come!

[pudzplace]

Brandy,

Our instructions are VERY specific ... each document must go the Chinese consulate that has geographic responsibility for the state in which the document originates (not where you reside). In our case, we had to work with 3 different consulates -- our documents originating in Minnesota went to the consulate in Chicago; our documents from South Dakota and South Carolina had to go to the Washington D.C. consulate (which requires an additional step of going through the U.S. Secretary of State, then Colin Powell), and our documents from Hawaii had to go to the consulate in Los Angeles. We saved some money and prepared the dossier ourselves ... our agency pronounced that it was all accurate and went to China on 2/11/05. The fact that we live in Minnesota had nothing to do with it, according to our instructions. Hope that helps!

Feel free to PM me with questions.

Sharon

[Dave D]

Our documents from hawaii and north carolina went to DC to the US Secretary of state then came back to my agency to go with all of my other documents to the NY Chinese consulate. both methods work. The reason behind them is this:

The Chinese consulate for a particular area can only authenticate signatures from their area (NY Chinese consulate doesn't have hawaii S of S signature on record). However, the all have the US S of S signature on record. and China has all of their consulates on record. and the only requirement is that authentic signatures can be verified.

-David
Long Island, NY