Apostille tip: Check whether your state or province issues apostilles for your diploma
Your diploma's apostille comes from the office tied to where the school is, not where you live now. Here is exactly which office that is for every US state and Canadian province.
Park English2026-11-033 min read
You already know you need an apostille on your diploma for the E-2 visa. What trips people up is sending it to the wrong desk, then waiting two weeks to find out it bounced back.
The mistake is almost always the same: people assume apostilles come from one national office, the way a passport does. They don't. In both the US and Canada, the office depends on what kind of document you're holding and where it was created, not where you currently live.
For US diplomas, the rule is simple once you know it: a diploma or transcript apostille is issued by the state competent authority where the document was notarized or certified, never by the federal Office of Authentications. That competent authority is almost always the Secretary of State's office, usually in the state capital, in the state where your university is. Not your home state if you moved. Not the state your parents live in. The state on your diploma.
A Pennsylvania diploma needs Pennsylvania, even if you now live in California. A diploma from Pennsylvania is apostilled by Pennsylvania even if you live elsewhere. If you went to school in Ohio and now live in Texas, your diploma still goes to Columbus, not Austin. The federal Department of State in Washington only touches federal documents like your FBI background check. The US Department of State's Office of Authentications only apostilles documents issued by federal agencies, and a university is not a federal agency.
Two states do it differently enough to mention: Alaska uses the Lieutenant Governor's office and Georgia uses the Superior Courts Clerks' Cooperative Authority, instead of a Secretary of State. If your school is in either one, search the office name directly rather than "Secretary of State apostille [state]", or you'll land on the wrong page.
For Canadian diplomas, the system changed in 2024 and a lot of advice online is still written for the old process. As of January 11, 2024, when the Apostille Convention comes into effect, Canada will issue Apostilles for authentication of all documents, replacing the old two-step embassy legalization chain. But who issues it still splits by province.
Each province and territory designates its own competent authority to apostille locally issued documents, including diplomas from provincial institutions. Several provinces (Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan among them) run their own apostille office. If your degree is from a university outside those provinces, documents notarized in Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Prince Edward Island and Yukon still go to Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa.
Here's the quick version:
| Where your diploma is from | Who apostilles it |
|---|---|
| A US state with its own office (most states) | That state's Secretary of State |
| Alaska | Office of the Lieutenant Governor |
| Georgia | Superior Courts Clerks' Cooperative Authority |
| Ontario, Quebec, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan | That province's apostille office |
| Manitoba, the Atlantic provinces, NWT, Nunavut, Yukon | Global Affairs Canada |
Before you send anything, confirm two things with your own school's registrar and your state or provincial office's website: whether your diploma needs a notarized copy first, and whether that office wants the original document or a certified copy. Processing time varies by office and by season, so build in a few extra weeks rather than timing it to the day.
If you're a Canadian teacher getting your diploma apostilled under the newer system, double check your province's current fee and turnaround, since offices are still catching up on volume after the 2024 change. And if you're going through Global Affairs Canada because your province doesn't issue its own, know that it's a mail-in process, not a walk-in counter.
One more thing worth knowing before you mail anything: the office that apostilles your diploma is not the same one that apostilles your criminal background check. In the US, that's the federal Department of State, not your state. Keep the two processes separate in your head, because they genuinely run on different tracks with different offices and different mailing addresses.