Technical article

Getting US Papers Accepted Abroad

A friend told them the papers need a stamp first.

By Neil Solomon · 5 min read

Picture a couple named Paul and Ruth. Both are 66. They plan to apply for residence in Italy, and Ruth has been looking at Austria too. They have their marriage certificate and birth certificates in a folder. A friend told them the papers need a stamp first. Is that true, and how long could it take?

The stamp has a name

The stamp is called an apostille. It comes from a treaty of 5 October 1961, the Apostille Convention. The Hague Conference on Private International Law keeps the list of members. It shows Austria joined with effect from 13 January 1968 and Italy from 11 February 1978. The United States is also a member.

Between members, the apostille takes the place of an older, longer process called legalisation. An Austrian government page (updated 23 January 2026) says this in German: "tritt die Apostille an die Stelle der Legalisation." It adds that an apostille "bedarf keiner weiteren Bestätigung", meaning it needs no further confirmation. That is my paraphrase of the page.

Who gives the stamp in the United States

The US Department of State says there are two paths. For documents signed by certain federal officials, "an apostille issued by the U.S. Department of State" is needed. For state documents, the page says they "must be authenticated by the competent authority in the state where the document was executed." In most cases a birth or marriage certificate is a state document, so the state office is the one to ask. That last sentence is my reading of the two quotes. The page does not name documents.

The Department of State page that I read carries the date 6 January 2023. It gives no fees and no waiting times.

The Department of State page on its Office of Authentications (no date shown) does give both for requests to that federal office: "We will process your request in 4 weeks from the date we receive it." and it charges US$20 for each document request. The page speaks of document requests, and it does not say that the same time holds for state offices.

What each country adds

What the Italian fee table adds

The Italian Consulate General in Los Angeles publishes an extract of its consular fee table, valid from 1 October to 31 December 2026 and set each quarter at an exchange rate of EUR 1.00 to US$1.1516 (read 11 October 2026). Among the lines: certification that a translation not made at the consulate conforms to the original is EUR 13.00 per sheet (US$15.00); authentication of a signature is EUR 20.00 (US$23.10). The table is in euros and the dollar amount moves with the quarterly rate; another consulate may use its own table. My arithmetic: a marriage certificate and two birth certificates, each with a one-sheet translation, comes to three sheets, or EUR 39 (about US$45) for the consular step.

What this article leaves for another day

• How long a state office takes. The federal office states 4 weeks. Each state office publishes its own time, and it changes with the season, so ask yours.
• Which Austrian office asks for which paper. That is set by the office that handles your residence application, and the page I read from the foreign ministry does not mention the United States.
• How old a document may be before Austria or Italy asks for a newer one. The office handling your application states it.

The honest answer to "how long" is 4 weeks at the federal office, per its own page, and a time set by each state office. The steps are clear. Get the paper from the right US office, add the apostille, then translate and, for Italy, have the consulate authenticate the translation.