Bonaire Residency for U.S. Citizens: FBI Check Now Required

[DSearle]

As of January 1, 2017, to satisfy the Good Conduct Certification requirement, IND now requires a national background check for U.S. citizens. "Certificates of good conduct that have been issued by the authorities of the state or city where the person was residing, are no longer accepted."

This makes a lot of sense, but it's also significantly more trouble for the applicant. What is needed is what the FBI calls an Identity History Summary Check. You can read all about it and start the process on this page from the FBI website: https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/id...summary-checks. NOTE: the current processing time by the FBI is 12-14 weeks.

The IND also requires that this document must have an apostille attached. To get that, you need to submit it to the State Department after you get it back from the FBI. As of now, I have not figured out how one does this or how long it takes. Just today, I sent an inquiry to the State Department through their website, which will take three to five days for a response. I also sent an email to the consulate in Curacao. I'll keep checking around, and I'll let everyone know what I find out.

Doug Searle
Bonaire Help Desk
US Consular Warden for Bonaire

[bonairehomes]

Doug -

Can you also get these documents apostiled by the Secretary of State of the state in which you are located? I think it is worth asking the question.

[Bill Murphy]

Doug

Bob is on the right track with the Secretary of State in your resident state. I have conducted government business in 27 countries and my Florida state apostille has always been accepted for government bids, request for quotes and actual contracts for purchase with the actual government entities.These documents always require an official raised seal with notarization and affidavit from the State.

This is an antiquated system that remains very popular in LATAM.


Bill Murphy



QUOTE=bonairehomes;452740]Doug -

Can you also get these documents apostiled by the Secretary of State of the state in which you are located? I think it is worth asking the question.[/QUOTE]

[Bruce Z]

Thanks Doug for making us all aware of this new requirement. The delay has to be factored in for sure.

[DSearle]

OK. Research complete. Here's the full scoop:

For United States citizens applying for residency in Bonaire.

One of the documents required for your application for Admission by Operation of Law (IND form MBES-08)
is “a legalised certificate of good conduct, for the last five years, issued by the competent authority where
you have lived for the last five years (not older than three months).” This document is also called a VOG
(Verklaring omtrent gedrag).

Until recently, IND accepted a document produced by your local police department, and this document
required no authentication. Since January 1, 2017, you must provide a VOG involving a nationwide search,
and the document must be authenticated with an apostille. You get the document you need from the FBI,
and because it’s a federal document, the apostille must come from the U.S. Department of State
(your state government cannot authenticate a federal document).

WARNING: It takes about 18 weeks to get these documents from the federal government,
12-14 weeks for the FBI document and 5 weeks for the apostille from the State Department.

Getting the FBI Identity History Summary Check

You can read all about it and start the process on this page of the FBI website:
https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/id...summary-checks. Read the FAQs on this page.

Step One: Complete the Form
It’s linked in the webpage above, or you can get it here: https://forms.fbi.gov/identity-history-
summary-checks-review/q384893984839334.pdf

Step Two: Get Fingerprinted
There’s a standard form you must use. This is not a do-it-yourself project. Read the instructions
on the FBI website.

Step Three: Pay the Fee
The fee is $18 per person. You can pay by money order, certified check, or credit card (by filling out
a form with the payment information). You cannot pay by cash, personal check or business check.

Step Four: Go Over the Checklist
Make sure you’ve included everything.

Step Five: Send Everything in to the FBI
When you get the report back from the FBI, you send it in to the State Department.

Getting the Apostille from the State Dept

Here’s the link to the State Department webpage for this purpose: https://travel.state.gov/content/
travel/en/legal-considerations/judicial/authentication-of-documents/apostille-requirements.html

Here’s the link to the form (DS-4194) you need to complete:
https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/183033.pdf

The instructions are on page 3 of the form. It’s pretty straightforward.
The fee is $8 per document, and you should enclose a check (a personal check is OK for this), the
completed form, and the documents to be authenticated. The Country of Use (Section 4 of DS-4194)
is Caribbean Netherlands. WARNING: Do not mail important documents like these to your
Bonaire address. This will add several weeks to the time it takes to receive the documents, and
risks their being lost altogether.

Bonaire Help Desk provides this information without cost as a public service. It is compiled from publicly available sources and is true
to the best of our knowledge, but this is not legal advice and we make no warrant or guarantee.

Bonaire Help Desk is a service of International Bible Church of Bonaire.

[DSearle]

According to both the FBI and US State Dept websites, you would NOT be able to obtain a state government apostille for this document. It is a federal document, so it needs a federal apostille.

[Kate B]

Hi Folks,
We're on Bonaire now for two weeks and just applied for our residency last week, including the FBI apostille, which took us less than 2 weeks to obtain after we discovered we needed it. I will have my husband Ian post the details here in a few hours on the specifics of the businesses we used to expedite it (he's off diving right now) but basically it involved going into a business in San Francisco (near where we live in California) to get our fingerprints electronically submitted to the FBI, who then released them to this agency who emailed the FBI response to us, then we emailed it to a business in Washington DC that took the completed forms to get the apostille and then fed exed it back to us. It was not cheap, I think Ian said it cost about $600 for both of us, but it worked smoothly and quickly. I'm assuming this can be done from almost any city, but more to come from Ian later! Best of luck everyone, we look forward to meeting other ex-pats on the island. Our target move date is July 28, 2017.

Kate Butler
Owner, Sea la Vie Villa, Bonaire

[Kate B]

Hi everyone, this is Ian (Mr. Kate B),

Here is the information that Kate promised you about quickly obtaining your Apostilled FBI background check.

We went through National Background Check. (www.nationalbackgroundcheck.com). They are associated with companies that can take your fingerprints and then submit them electronically to the FBI. In our case we had to go to San Francisco and get our finger prints taken. Here is a quote from the National Background Check web site:

• National Background Check Incorporated channeling for FBI background check

NBCI is also one of a handful of Channelers whose results can be Apostilled, if necessary. Our results are returned from the FBI in a PDF format with the FBI seal in the background. These results are signed by the FBI Section Chief, and are termed "FBI Authenticated Document," by the FBI. Once applicants have their results returned to them from NBCI, they the applicant can then send the authenticated document to the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC to be apostilled.

[Ian again]When you sign up for the background check, you can select an apostille ready PDF, which they will email to you. We also had a copy mailed to us by US Post. We received the PDF in a week or less. We then emailed the PDF to Apostille Courier Express, which can apostille a PDF that is emailed to them. They print this PDF out and hand carry it to the state department where it is apostilled. They then mail it to you by 2-day US Postal Service.

As Kate mentioned, this was an expensive process. But we got our apostilled FBI background check in less than two weeks.

If you do not live near a major city where they can electronically submit your finger prints, my understanding is that you need to get finger print cards made my the local police. This process may take longer and carries the risk that the FBI might reject the finger prints on the basis of quality.

[FlaParrotHead]

I may have missed it but how current do Apostiled documents (birth, marriage, and FBI Checks) have to be? We are trying to time everything as necessary.

Thanks, Bill

[wishing4wind]

It took me from March 2017 to July to get my FBI check (my fingerprints were rejected 3 times!), then I personally went to Washington DC in late July to have it apostilled. When I applied for residency, they told me it was only good I believe until early October. There is a time limit on how old the apostil is allowed to be, and I believe it's 3 months or 90 days, if this small amount of guidance helps you at all.

My permit was just approved! So now the next step is to present my birth certificate and marriage documents, and I have an appointment on Monday. while I brought the documents with me, the paperwork of what to bring says the birth certificate cannot be issued older than 12 months, marriage and divorce certificates not older than 6 months. I've been told this is not always adhered to, so I have ordered up fresh documents to pick up in the US when I'm home for the holidays.

I hope this info was helpful to you.
~Jeyna