Getting a triple-stamped criminal record from the NY State was an adventure in convoluted bureaucracy.
This was a comically long process that took around 7 hours of activity spanning a month or so. First I had to get the NYS police to send me a criminal background check - apparently this is easier than getting it from the FBI, but I didn’t even explore the federal route. You can’t ask the police for your criminal record - you have to go to an out-sourced vendor: IdentoGo and make an appointment at your closest finger-printing center. The closest to me was at W35th St - they were professional and got to me right at my appointment time. One set of fingerprints and $62 later - I was ready to wait for the security check.
A few weeks later - I got an envelope with 3 sheets of paper clearly printed directly from a website on normal letter paper. These pages included my photo and some personal information - and then a bunch of blank sections where my nefarious past would have been described. It seemed like a pretty silly piece of paper - anyone with access to MS Word or even a passing understanding of HTML could have easily duplicated it...
The Thursday of that week, I began a journey that spanned 6 hours and took me across lower Manhattan. I headed to the city clerk's office in the grand Justice Plaza where I proceeded to wait in one line to get a notary to stamp the paper to say: "Sasha says this is his criminal record" - then the same notary attached another piece of paper to say: "I'm really a notary." Next I stood in another line to pay for both of these stamps - and despite a relatively wordy and slightly confusing sign describing what payments were accepted they took credit card!
The last step was to pick-up an Apostille - i.e., another official paper that says: "The clerk that confirmed that the notary that confirmed that the Sasha said this document was his criminal record is an official clerk." However, they only accepted bank-checks from U.S. banks, so I had to take a quick side-trip to the conveniently located Citibank. After a quick trip back (short break because I met an old college friend and got to catch-up with Dave for the first time since 2005!). Finally, I waited for another 30 minutes at the Apostille office and was ready to head to the consulate!
It was like a Russian Nesting Doll of Bureaucratic silliness!
For more on my journey to legal residency: