How to Get an FBI Background Check While Living Abroad
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Tim Marting
Founder - Citizen Remote
Last update
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Your visa application wants a police clearance from your home country, you're already living overseas, and the FBI doesn't have an office in the city you're in. This is one of the most common blockers in a long-stay visa file, and it's usually solvable in four to eight weeks if you start in the right order.
The document you need is the FBI Identity History Summary. People call it an FBI background check, a police clearance, or a rap sheet. It's the same thing: a national criminal history check covering every US state, which is why consulates ask for it instead of a check from your last city.
Here's the process, the real costs, and the two steps that catch people out.
Before anything else: find out which version your consulate wants
Do this first, because it changes everything downstream.
Some countries accept the FBI report on its own. Most want it legalised with an apostille, which is a separate process at a separate agency and adds weeks. A few want it translated as well, and some set a validity window as short as 90 days from the issue date.
If you order the report without knowing which version you need, you can easily finish the whole process and find your document is unusable. Ask the consulate handling your file, in writing, and keep the reply.
Typical validity is six months to a year, but that's a convention rather than a rule, and it's set by the country asking, not by the FBI.
Step 1: the application and the 18 dollars
The FBI charges a flat 18 US dollars per Identity History Summary request. That fee has been stable for years, and it doesn't change because you're applying from Bangkok instead of Ohio.
The FBI runs an online system called the Electronic Departmental Order, at edo.cjis.gov, where you complete the request and pay by card. Reports from applicants outside the US are mixed on one point: can you reach the portal from a foreign IP address? Some fingerprinting companies state flatly that you can't. Read that knowing those same companies sell the mail-in alternative.
Try the portal first. If it won't take your application, the mail-in route still works and costs the same in FBI fees.
You can also use an FBI-approved Channeler, which is a private company authorised to submit requests. Channelers are faster but they add their own fee on top of the 18 dollars, and most of them still can't solve the fingerprint problem for you.
Step 2: the fingerprints, which is the actual bottleneck
You cannot submit fingerprints electronically from outside the United States. That single constraint shapes the whole timeline.
What you need is a physical ink fingerprint card, either form FD-258 or form FD-1164. Both are downloadable from the FBI's site. Print the card on heavy card stock rather than normal paper, because thin paper prints get rejected and you'll have lost a month finding out.
Then you need someone to roll your prints onto it. Three options, in rough order of how often they work:
Local police. In many countries the local station will do ink-and-roll prints for a small fee or free. Call ahead and bring your own card, because they won't have FD-258 stock.
Private fingerprinting agencies. Common in large cities, more expensive, and usually familiar with the FBI card format. Some run mobile services that come to you.
A US embassy or consulate. Availability has shrunk a lot and many posts have dropped the service entirely. Check that specific post's website before you rely on it.
Whoever does it, check the card before you leave: full name, date of birth, place of birth, citizenship and the reason for the request all need to be filled in. Incomplete cards are one of the most common causes of a rejected submission.
Step 3: mail it, then wait
Completed cards go to the FBI's CJIS Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia, at 1000 Custer Hollow Road, Clarksburg, WV 26306. If you applied through the online portal, mail the card together with the confirmation email you were sent. Use the address printed on that confirmation, since it can differ from the general one.
Use a courier with tracking. International post to a rural West Virginia address is not where you want to economise.
Once the FBI physically has your card, processing is fast. Reported turnaround ranges from one to five business days, and the older two-to-six-week figure that circulates online reflects the legacy paper process rather than the current one.
The slow part is never the FBI. It's the two international mail legs on either side. Budget one to three weeks each way and the total lands around four to eight weeks.
Step 4: the apostille, if your country needs one
This is where most people get stuck, so read carefully.
The FBI Identity History Summary is a federal document. That means only the US Department of State's Office of Authentications in Washington DC can apostille it. A state-level apostille from California or Texas will be rejected, and plenty of people have paid for one before finding that out.
The request form is DS-4194 and the fee is 20 US dollars per document, on top of your 18 dollars.
By mail, current reporting puts the Office of Authentications at five weeks or more after they receive your document, before you add international shipping in both directions. Walk-in service in DC is faster, around nine business days, which is useful only if you have someone in Washington who can do it for you. Commercial apostille services offer similar turnaround nationwide for a fee.
On whether an electronic PDF can be apostilled: sources genuinely contradict each other. Some apostille providers say the FBI's digitally signed PDF is accepted as long as it's printed without being re-saved, scanned or edited, since any of those break the digital signature. Others state that only the mailed hard copy with an original signature is accepted and that photocopies are refused.
The safe move, if you need an apostille, is to request the mailed hard copy when you order the report. It costs you nothing extra beyond the postage and it removes a failure mode that would otherwise cost you another two months.
What this costs and how long it takes
Set your expectations around 38 US dollars in government fees, 18 to the FBI and 20 to the State Department, plus fingerprinting, plus courier costs which will usually exceed both.
On time, plan for four to eight weeks without an apostille, and add another six to eight weeks if you need one. If your consulate imposes a 90-day validity window, that tight interval is exactly why you order the report only after you've confirmed the requirements and roughly know your submission date.
If you're not American
The same logic applies with different agencies, and the national check is almost always what's wanted rather than a local one.
Canadians need an RCMP certified criminal record check, which also requires fingerprints and has accredited agencies that handle submissions from abroad. Brits use an ACRO Police Certificate, which is ordered online and doesn't require fingerprints for most applicants. Australians need an AFP National Police Check, which is ordered online and is generally the fastest of the four.
Each has its own legalisation route, and the same rule holds everywhere: confirm which format your destination country wants before you order anything.
Which visas will ask for this
Almost every long-stay route does. Most European digital nomad visas require a criminal record check as part of the file, including Spain and Portugal, and both also require proof of health coverage alongside it.
If you're assembling a visa file from overseas, order the police check first and the insurance second. Insurance you can buy in an afternoon. The background check is the piece that decides your timeline.
Author
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Tim Marting is an entrepreneur and a founder of Citizen Remote a site for remote workers and digital nomads. Although from the US, Tim currently lives in Spain, and has been a world citizen for the last 5 years, living in 3 different countries. He had other long-term stops in Australia, Italy, Indonesia, Thailand and the UK. His life goal is “to enable border-less travel and border-less relations for the rest of this beautiful world.
