The accession of the People's Republic of China to the Convention of October 5, 1961, on the Abolition of the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents will simplify the process for Chinese citizens, including Chinese investors, to obtain U.S. visas. American journalist Anayat Durrani writes about this.
"This reduces the time needed to prepare an EB-5 visa application and also speeds up consular processing," Durrani quotes EB5 BRICS regional manager Joan Fernandez in her article.
According to Fernandez, if previously Chinese citizens took several months to prepare the necessary documents for obtaining a visa, now it will only take a few days.
"Once mainland China accepts the requirements of the Convention, Chinese documents will go through a one-step certification process by issuing a single certificate with an apostille by a competent authority for use in other member countries of the Hague Agreement, which is a much simpler and faster process," stated Abir Hussein, a partner at the Fragomen law firm's office in the UAE.
Experts say that previously, investors from China may have faced doubts from American officials regarding the authenticity of their documents. Apostille services will remove this issue.
The Apostille Convention will enter into force for all of China on November 7, 2023. For now, it only applies to the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, where it was introduced by the authorities of the United Kingdom and Portugal. China has been a member of the Hague Conference since 1987, but for a long time, it did not ratify the Apostille Convention and remained the largest country in the world without a simplified document legalization procedure.
