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Au Pair Paperwork

Question

My sister is coming here from the US as an au pair in January.  For the application for the work permit and visa, she has to provide "an extract from your judicial record dating from no more than six months prior to the date of application and covering the past year".  Do any Americans out there, or anyone knowledgeable about this paperwork, know what she needs to get from the US authorities to satisfy this requirement?  I seem to remember when I came here to work I needed to get some sort of federal background check, but it took more than 3 mos to get it and we don't have that much time in this case.  Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

 


Sherri

Hello, as a former American au pair in Belgium who had to jump through A LOT of hoops, I can answer just about any question about this headache of a process! What you're referring to is this: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/background-checks/background_checks

It can take up to 8-12 weeks...so have her apply for it as soon as possible. What I had to do was get fingerprints at my local police station ($12), and then send in the fingerprints with the application (additional $18 to the US Treasury). Then you just have to wait, but the Belgian consulate told me you can send in your visa application while you are awaiting the criminal background check, they can still start processing it. 

Hope this helps, let me know if I can give any other advice on this process - my host family and I were very, very confused about the whole thing while we went through it, and could have definitely used the help! 

Oct 11, 2011 04:54