Apostille birth certificate in DR

Hope you get an answer here. I find this recent Apostille business to be a real pain. Given the fact that it's actually supposed to make moving bits of paper easier.

I mean who really gives a $hit if your birth certificate needs another piece of paper saying it's your birth certificate? And how many people actually commit marriage fraud? It seems it's like this the whole world over, where normal innocent people are treated like criminals in every day life.

Nice work if you're a bureaucrat though (I could't be one if it wasn't for my spell checker I couldn't spell it!

You can't apostille a British birth certificate in DR, point blank. And they will not accept a copy without a signature of the original. And if the person who signed the original has died it can take months to verify the signature for apostille. So your luck is out I think, you are not going to make the gate for 9th If you were hoping the marriage would ease the visa process. I agree there is nothing of this anywhere that is obvious.

This was one of the last details that seemed to surface at the last minute before I got married in the DR as well...but it makes sense if you think about it. Take the US...50 states each containing potentially 100s of towns with 100s of officials signing as town clerks etc....part of the hague convention simply put into place a system whereas the US state dept and its state equivilents could certify that a particular town's documents and official signers were legit. Especially where these docs are supposed to be accepted as legal in other countries who would know?? A fancy seal on embossed paper from east podunk usa means nada. It is a way of adding conformity and uniformity to the 10s of 1000s of points of issue in the usa....which translates to 100s of 1000s points of issue worldwide.

Put another way...want a simple marriage? Find a spouse in town.