aliwynn wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2024 4:26 pm
Mine was lost when I was about 19 and moved from my granny’s house here to Ireland. She passed so I don’t have access to that house. Whenever you reorder one you will always get a “duplicate” which is supposed to have just as much official standing as the original one. The one I have is certified by notary public (where I am from). Surely I am not the only one who doesn’t have original?
You've answered your own question - all birth certs issued by your birth state are all official.
If you have a document issued by the state you are born in, that is an original as is meant in identification purposes. You could re-order a new copy every year and they would all be considered original for these purposes. That it says duplicate or is the 200th time you've re-requested it, is irrelevant, as long as it is a piece of paper issued officially by your birth country it is considered original in birth cert terms. Many countries only ever issue a birth cert with 'duplicate' on it, even on first request. French birth certs are typically valid for 3 months and so are re-requested with enormous regularity. They are all 'original'.
Regarding who certified it - you can always try with foreign certification. Sometimes it causes delays and requests for a re-submission that was certified locally, sometimes it doesn't. If they can't verify your notary public (because they no longer work or their registration isn't current or the national database they are on isn't publicly accessible) a request for re-submission is foreseeable. So it will depend on your appetite to lengthen your application processing time.
FBR submissions are almost always certified internationally - the FBR process is used to it. The naturalisation process sees local certification much more frequently and therefore is more comfortable with that and far less familiar with verifying international notary publics. Requests for additional documentation usually comes with a 28 day deadline, and some people find it difficult or stressful to get birth certs re-issued, sent to them, re-certified and re-submitted within that time. And requests for additional documents always seems to blow out the decision timeline well beyond average processing time. For those reasons removing foreseeable hiccups in documents before submission is typically advised - but it is your application, how you run it is up to you.