Earning a green card

I’ve been busy the past few days, organizing the documents I’ll need to apply for a Belarusian green card. It’s a complicated process, but based on what I’ve heard at home and what I’ve done so far here, it may be easier in Belarus than in the USA. That’s not to say it’s easy.

I’ll tell just one story from today, from which you may reasonably extrapolate. I needed to get a few documents translated, including my passport. I have a signed and certified translation of my passport, but this time I needed a notarized translation so the translator said she’d have to start fresh. (It can be certified or it can be notarized, but it cannot be both.) She had my documents for a couple of days and she sent me a text message to my phone to assure me that I could come and pick stuff up this afternoon.

I really like the translators. They’re friendly and helpful, though today’s helpfulness wasn’t as complete as I’ve come to expect. They didn’t notarize the document themselves, as I had expected. Instead, they tied the translation to the document with plain white thread and they told me to take it to the notary’s office two or three blocks down the street. Given the size of the buildings on the street, I asked if there were some particular office I should look for within the building. No, she said, any office.

OK. I found the building easily enough, but figured I was probably in the wrong place because it was a government building and there was a big bronze plaque on the door announcing the fact. I went inside to find out where I should really be going, and walked up to the first office I saw with an open door. I explained to them that I didn’t know the word for what I wanted in Russian but in English it would be called Notary Public.

The occupants of the office conversed among themselves and somebody said the word “Notarice.” I exclaimed that indeed sounded like what I wanted. They still seemed very uncertain about that, however, and one of them went off to see if she if she could find somebody better able to help me. Since they seemed friendly and helpful, I told them I’d call my wife who could help them help me. Alla was at a bit of a disadvantage when I phoned her because she expected I’d just pick up a notarized document and head directly off to the next task. I told Alla that these people didn’t understand the word “Notary” and I handed the phone to one of them, who was relieved to discover that Alla’s Russian is better than mine.

Alla told the woman about what I was doing and the woman finally asked me if I had a document to be notarized. “Yes!,” I cried, and took it out of my bag.

“OK, fine,” she said, “you need to pay 17,500 rubles.” No problem. I was ready for this and I offered her my money. As usual, she couldn’t handle my money herself. Unfortunately, however, in this case there was no cashier in the building so she sent me to the nearest bank to make a deposit to their account and bring back the receipt.

I left my document and found the bank. At the bank, they gave me a tiny scrap of paper and asked me to write down my name, address, and home phone number. I did that, and then they took my money, entered all the info into their computer, and gave me a receipt. All this for a transaction equivalent to about six US dollars!

When I returned to the big building with my receipt I stopped to read the bronze plaque on the door. It said “Notarice.” Apparently the whole building is devoted to notary functions, though the public is sent to a particular room number, apparently the one I stumbled onto the first time.

When I brought my receipt into the room, they handed me my translated passport. The plain white thread had been replaced with a fancy red one, sealed at the back with the Notary’s emblem. Done! Picking up my notarized translation took just over an hour.

Doing stuff around here, it’s always good to assume that it’ll take a long time. If it’s quick, that’s wonderful. But the American “time is money” culture certainly is not the norm here.