Hi Requirements are different depending on what type of visa you are getting for residency. Your lawyer is always your best source of information. The Consulate was very helpful also. The 8 documents morphing into 20 I made an error, it was only 18 docs. The reason is : On the Consular website (virtual consulate) it specifies that, if your documentation for a particular item is not in Spanish, you much include the translation (it is always notarized also) in that electronic file. I had each document in a separate .pdf file, so had to ask a friend to put them together, as I did not have Adobe Acrobat which can combine separate .pdf files into one. So, for, say, federal criminal background check, I had - the background check legalized by DFAIT, the translation, and also the declaration of the Professional translator which was notarized and legalized by DFAIT. (DFAIT is Canada's versio of how you get a doc apostilled.) So, when I received electronic notification - first that documents had been registered in Consulate's virtual system, secondly that they were ready to receive the actual physical documents - I went to the Consulate and handed them the documents. Only 8 made it through the system, because they had long discussions about the fact that I had physically presented the documents just as they appeared in the combined .pdf files. They had to separate out the physical documents, giving final approval to the , e.g. background check doc, but setting aside the translation and notarization of translation of that document, and so on, for all my docs. Also they found that I could not include my drivers' licence doc with my five-year Drivers' record doc. So that the extra docs were actually the translations notarized, also one additional doc, being the drivers' licence.
Unfortunately, then there was the problem that this was the first time in 2015 that they had been presented with translations. At first it appeared that the problem was that I had just turned 65 in the middle of the process. But later it appeared that the issue was that, in their electronic consulate system, they had the wrong authorization person's name for translations. This person was not there anymore, and there would be trouble in Ecuador if they used a different autorisation person for the translations. Hopefully this will be resolved today, as I have been alerted to come in to pick up docs. (They had to go into the system and change the authorization name I think).
HelenPivoine
