Document Attestation and its Purpose:
Whenever a student or a professional person steps out of his country in foreign lands maybe for job or sometimes for further education the first thing that is asked is their educational documents without which their visa cannot be applied. There have been a lot of instances where the candidates get admitted to an university or get a job and then afterwards there are some issues later on if it is found that their degree is not from a bona fide university. This causes a problematic situation for the individual and the University / Employer and normally the conclusion is deportation of the candidate and discontinuation of studies / job. Therefore to avoid any such incidences the Governments in most of the countries have some norms in place for attestation of documents which ensures that the person travelling for job / study is holding a proper qualification and it is verified by a competent authority in his home country
Although above does explain the motive behind the documents attestation there are various aspects of verification which are accomplished by Documents attestation which are as below:
Verification of College / University:
There are many universities across the globe have just an online presence, no classes, no lectures and they just hand out degrees against payment of fees. So although the degrees obtained from such Universities can be checked and verified online, the University itself is blacklisted by many other Universities and Employers. All Embassies and Ministry of External Affairs has a live list of all such institutions and whenever a document is presented for attestation it is checked for its origin. If found from any such blacklisted institution, the document is rejected and therefore the holder of the document cannot get the employment visa or an admission for further study on that basis. Thus the document attestation serves the purpose of checking the validity and reputation of the University / College that has awarded the Degree to the candidate.
Verification of Course Studied:
Many a times the University reputation is good but the course studied is a part-time course or a distance learning course. In that case the Embassy has a right to reject the document as it does not hold the same value as a full-time course. Especially the Qatar, Kuwait and in some cases even the UAE Embassy rejects documents if the course for which degree is obtained does not fulfil their criterion. Therefore, attestation also serves the purpose of certification that the course which is studied is recognised by the foreign University / Employer.
Verification of Candidate (personal verification):
Another purpose of attestation is verification of candidate i.e. the applicant himself has done the course (verified against his birthdate and personal details as mentioned in the passport), and if any discrepancy is found then it can be highlighted and his application for attestation rejected before he travel abroad for job / education. There have been many instances of discrepancies in name, given name, birth date etc mentioned on passport and that mentioned on the Educational certificates. In all these cases candidates need to be vigilant before travel and straighten out the issues before they travel. This is automatically achieved during the documents attestation as all these parameters are checked and then their documents are attested.
Document Attestation process for UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi
Although all these countries belong to GCC group of countries each one has its own rules and regulations regarding attestations. Document accepted by some embassies are not accepted by others and there are some prior attestations to be done before submission to the Embassies. Even in those rules each Embassy is different. Normally prior attestations which are required are Home Department Attestation, HRD attestation, Notary attestation, SDM (Sub Divisional Magistrate) attestation and MEA (Ministry of external affairs) attestation. In addition to this there is University verification process which can be added for some documents. Therefore in short, Embassy does not simply accept any document which is not attested by any or all of the above bodies and they need pre-attested documents which they can consider for attestation. Embassies then apply their own norms of acceptance / rejection to all the pre-attested documents and then hand over the documents back to registered agencies whether attested or rejected. This process may take anywhere between 2 – 5 working days and may differ depending on the incoming documents flow and work load on the Embassy staff.
