Traveling abroad is a dream many wish to live for true. Going out to a foreign country, be it for personal or professional reasons, exploring and living its geography and culture, has been an altogether different experience for many people. With the rapid and ever-growing technological advancement, going abroad has been relatively easier than it was in the past. Today you can just plan your trip and book your tickets with just a click, from the comfort of your home.
Even though there is a relatively lesser inconvenience with regards to paperwork today, it still requires some work. Before one visits a foreign nation, be it for personal, educational, or business purposes, one needs to ensure that all the required documentation work is done perfectly. And for this, embassy attestation of the documents and certificates is very important.
let’s understand
What an Embassy and Embassy Attestation Is?
An embassy is an organization or headquarters for a foreign government representative in a host country. It is generally located in the capital city of the host nation and may also have branches known as Consulates, in other cities. The government of the host country is generally responsible for the security of the foreign diplomats in and around the embassy.
Although the primary purpose of an embassy is to help its nationals who are traveling to or residing in the host nation, it also interviews and verifies documents of the citizens of the host country who wish to travel to the representative country. Legalization and verification of the required documents such as travel or work visa, marriage certificate, or educational documents are necessitated.
This legalization is given by the foreign country's embassy, which thoroughly verifies all the documents and then attests them through either a signature or stamp. This entire process of verification of genuineness of the documents by ratifying every single detail on it and placing a stamp on it to authorize the same is known as Embassy attestation.
Why Is It Important?
The process is very important to provide credibility to the documents, thus making an individual or entity get access into the foreign nation and is normally followed by countries that aren't a part of the Apostille Hague Convention, 1961.
Under this convention or treaty, a document issued in one of the signatory nations can be certified for legal purposes in all other signatory nations. It thereby abolishes the requirement of the legalization of foreign public documents. India is one of the signing nations of the convention.
Embassy attestation is required when applying for any category of visa. For example, if one's purpose of the visit is for studying abroad, one needs to get all the educational documents authenticated and attested.
This provides a source of reliability and trustworthiness to the foreign authorities that the concerned individual or organization is legitimate and safe to be given entry to their country. It also saves an individual or entity from any future legal hassles associated with any kind of error in documentation. If one's documentation is not proper, one can face difficulty or altogether denial to stay in the foreign country.
Embassy Attestation Procedure
The entire procedure for embassy attestation is carried out in several stages and through several departments and it differs from country to country. It starts by booking an appointment online via an application and going through an interview round where one will be asked to mention the purpose of visiting the concerned nation.
This will be followed by verification of the credibility of all documents by a competent authority. Both original documents, as well as their photocopies, along with a photocopy of the passport of the applicant, are required to be submitted. It begins with authentication of the documents by the State Human Resource Development, Home Department and, Chamber of commerce for attesting educational, personal and, commercial documents respectively.
After attestation is done by these departments, the applicant then has to visit an outsource agency center nearest to his place of residence for deposition of verified documents. This is done because as a rule, no document is directly accepted from individuals at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which stands as the highest body for attestation in India, before embassy attestation.
The MEA provides both MEA attestation and Apostille attestation. Consequently, the documents pass through multiple re-verification done by the Ministry of External Affairs, after which, the documents are submitted to the concerned embassy for the final stamp, thus making them valid in that particular country.
Embassy Attestation Services
The process of Embassy Attestation can be time-consuming and tiresome. And thus to make it less complicated and more hassle-free, several authorized certification agencies in India provide attestation services. These agencies have a broader network with government agencies and work in making our attestation process happen in a secure and timely manner.
posted on 9 Jun, 2021. Posted In attestation.