Legalization and Late Registration
Information provided by Bernhard Reiter,
Thanks!
As already mentioned in the Visa page, the legalization of the German Embassy in Manila has been suspended until further notice. The corresponding information can be found on the web site of the German "Auswärtigen Amt", with this URL. The important part is the following:
| Wenn Urkunden bei einer inländischen Behörden vorgelegt
werden sollen und Zweifel am Beweiswert der Urkunden oder der Identität
des Inhabers bestehen, so kann die Vorlagebehörde die deutsche
Auslandsvertretung um Prüfung des Sachverhalts und Stellungnahme bitten.
Bei der, oftmals schwierigen Feststellung der Tatsachen entstehen Kosten,
die von dem Urkundsinhaber zu erstatten sind. Die inländische Behörde,
zumeist das Standesamt, wird normalerweise den Urkundsinhaber bitten, zunächst
eine Sicherheitsleistung für die zu erwartenden Kosten zu hinterlegen.
Die Urkunden und die Stellungnahme der Auslandsvertretung wird anschließend
der ersuchenden Behörde übersandt. Um dem Urkundsinhaber die spätere
Verwendung seiner Urkunde bei anderen Behörden zu erleichtern und um unnötige
weitere Prüfungen zu vermeiden, wird der Urkunde ein entsprechender
Hinweis beigeheftet.
Diese Verfahrensänderung betrifft Urkunden aus den folgenden Staaten: Bangladesh, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Indien, Kamerun, Kongo (Demokratische Republik), Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippinen, Ruanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Vietnam.
|
When documents are requested from a German office, and
they believe they might be frauds or the identity of the owner might be
wrong, these offices can request a check of the paper or the
circumstances. As this checkup can be quite difficult and cost quite
some money which has to be paid by the owner of the documents. The German
office, typically the marriage office (Standesamt), usually will ask
the owner of the documents to prepay a certain amount to cover the
expected costs. The documents plus the results of the checkup will be
forwarded again to the requesting office. To facilitate the use of the
"Legalized" papers and to avoid further requests for legalization
a note will be attached top the documents.
This change of the procedures applies for documents from the following countries: Bangladesh, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, India, Cameroon, Congo (Democratic Republic), Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Vietnam. |
Basically this means that a standard legalization, which had been done automatically up to May 10th 2000 will not be done anymore, and in case of doubt the legalization can be requested for the corresponding fee (typically between 500 and 750 Euro9
As already mentioned, this legalization will only be requested when there is justified doubt about the validity of the papers. Unfortunately there is one county in Germany, Baden Wuerttemberg, with the high courts in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, which always request since spring 2001 that the papers have to be legalized. One of the victims of this practice asked the responsible person in the high court why they do this, when all other high courts in Germany accept the papers when they seem to be completely legal. She answered that is done because of an order from the interior ministry in Germany. So we asked that ministry, and the answer was that they do not have the right at all to order anything in the high court, that this was a very stupid excuse of the official in the high court. So currently it is unknown who gave this order.
In the meantime we got the information that this rule has been ordered from the highest judges in the two courts in Baden Wuerttemberg directly. No other authority is involved. (5th of September 2002, from Gunter)
But the consequence is that these high courts are making it very hard for the German fiancée to get their loved ones over to Germany. Every citizen of Baden Wuerttemberg will have to wait an additional 5-6 month and he has to pay an additional 500 Euro or more to finally get the OK from the high courts in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart for the visa. Somebody in these high courts must be very very scared about some poor Filipinas coming to Germany.
Again some new information from Gunter: It would be no problem to get the papers from the above mentioned courts when the applicant can provide the paper: <Legal Capacity to Marry>. There was a Filipina who came to Germany based on a tourist visa, and she was clever enough to get that paper when she was in Germany. Her papers where accepted without problems by the high court within 2 weeks when she applied for the fiancée visa the next time.
Unfortunately this paper can only be obtained from the Philippine Embassies in Germany, and the applicant has to appear in person. We discussed this issue with the Philippine Embassy, They are not able to change those rules. They have difficulties already enough with some German authorities which do not want to accept their legal documents. When they would change these rules it would be even more difficult for them to have their papers accepted.
The procedure in this case is the following: The requesting office has to forward the papers in doubt to the German Embassy in Manila, either with specific questions, or with a request for a general check. Furthermore they have to declare that they will cover all costs, which they again will reimburse to the owner of the documents. As the embassy in most of the cases is not able to do the checkup by themselves, they will request the service of trusted lawyers/attorneys, other trusted persons and/or private research companies. This checks can only be done for documents which are excerpts from the microfiche data of the NSO and which have been printed on the colored security paper (SECPA). In case that the NSO is unable to print a corresponding document, a negative document will be issued. In such a case the following should be done:
Only the following documents can be legalized: Birth certificate, marriage certificate, single certificate, death certificate. When the NSO is not able to provide and certify these documents, all other documents cannot be accepted.
Late Registration handling in the German Embassy:
The following papers are required in case that the applicant got his/her passport based on papers obtained via the late registration process (See below).
The embassy requires true verified copies of the documents that led to the delayed registration from the NSO.
Late Registration:
Late registration means that at the time of the birth of the respective person the necessary registration had not been done correctly. Now this has to be corrected. A lot of proves will be asked form the NSO to accept that this person is the one it claims to be. These proves include:
The normal time to process such late registrations is 10 to 15 weeks, average of 12 weeks.