Applying for Portugal’s D7 Passive Income Visa, D8 Digital Nomad Visa, Golden Visa, or residency with AIMA means assembling a document file that has to survive review by multiple authorities — often a Portuguese consulate in the U.S. first, then AIMA (Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo) once you’re in the country. Your FBI or RCMP background check is one of the documents most likely to derail that process, because it involves the most separate steps: fingerprinting, federal processing, apostille, and certified translation, each handled by a different authority on its own timeline.
If you’ve searched for background check and apostille services for Portugal, you’ve likely come across large international providers, which operate across dozens of countries. That kind of scale is useful if you’re managing paperwork across several destinations at once. Tu Apostilla takes a narrower approach: we work in exactly two countries — Spain and Portugal — and nothing else. From the moment you’re fingerprinted, we return your FBI or RCMP background check results in 20 calendar days, excluding U.S. federal holidays.
1. Two Countries, Not Fifty
Tu Apostilla doesn’t compete on breadth. As we tell clients directly: we work exclusively with American citizens living in Portugal and Spain. That’s the entire scope of the business. In practice, that means:
- We track AIMA and Portuguese consulate requirements as closely as we track Spanish ones — because between the two countries, that’s the only rule set we work with.
- We understand where Portugal’s process actually causes delays: mainly the sequencing between apostille and translation. Getting the Portuguese certified translation done before the apostille is applied is one of the most common — and most expensive — mistakes applicants make, since the translation then has to be redone.
- Everything happens without you needing to leave Portugal. We coordinate FBI-approved fingerprinting (FD-258 cards) through trusted local providers near you, then handle the rest remotely.
2. Certified Portuguese Translation, Sequenced Correctly
Portugal’s immigration authorities — AIMA, Portuguese consulates, and Portuguese courts — generally require a certified Portuguese translation of your apostilled FBI or RCMP report before it can be accepted. Note that this is a different system from Spain’s traductor jurado / MAEC framework — Portugal has its own certification standards, and a translation that satisfies Spanish requirements won’t automatically satisfy Portuguese ones (or vice versa). Because we work in both countries, we handle each according to its own rules rather than applying a one-size-fits-all process.
The order matters as much as the translation itself: apostille first, translation second. If your document is translated before the U.S. Department of State applies the apostille, the translation has to be redone from scratch once the apostille is added — an avoidable delay we build our workflow around preventing.
3. What Real Clients Say
Rather than ask you to take our word for it, here’s what shows up in our verified Google reviews:
One recent client described working with our team member Gabriel as reassuring — they felt comfortable handing over responsibility for their background check and said the process felt efficient, with real people involved at every step rather than an automated pipeline. Another client, going through the fingerprinting process, specifically called out Gabriel and Alexandro by name for keeping the process organized and said they’d recommend the company for exactly that reason.
That kind of specific, attributable feedback is easy to verify — and it’s a better signal than a general marketing claim.
4. What the FBI/RCMP-to-Portugal Process Actually Involves
If you’re early in this process, here’s the general shape of it, regardless of which provider you use:
- Order your background check. For FBI checks, this means fingerprinting on an FBI-approved FD-258 card, submitted through a channeler or directly to the FBI. RCMP checks follow a parallel process through Canadian channels. Working through Tu Apostilla, results are back within 20 calendar days of fingerprinting, excluding U.S. federal holidays.
- Obtain the apostille. Once results are in hand, the FBI Identity History Summary is a federal document, so it must be apostilled by the U.S. Department of State specifically — a state-level apostille will be rejected. Standard Department of State processing commonly runs several weeks beyond the background check itself.
- Get a certified Portuguese translation — after the apostille, not before. Translating first is the single most common (and most costly) sequencing mistake applicants make.
- Confirm your validity window with your specific consulate or AIMA office. Portuguese authorities don’t apply one uniform rule here — required “freshness” for the background check has been reported anywhere from 90 days to several months depending on the consulate or visa type — so it’s worth confirming the exact window for your appointment rather than assuming a standard number.
Missing a step, or getting the sequencing wrong, is the most common reason Portugal visa applications get sent back or delayed.
5. Choosing What Fits Your Situation
If your paperwork is specifically U.S. or Canadian documents headed into Portugal or Spain, working with a team that handles nothing else — and coordinates fingerprinting, apostille, and certified translation as one sequenced process — is worth weighing.
Have questions about your D7, D8, Golden Visa, or AIMA timeline? Reach out to Tu Apostilla and we’ll walk you through exactly what your application needs.
