Migrating from Venezuela to Australia: documents, apostille & translation
General information about the Venezuelan documents and procedures that commonly come up in an Australian migration process — with links to the official sources.
This page gathers general information; it doesn't assess your case or replace the official sources. Every situation is different and the rules change — here's the overview and where to go to verify it.
Police certificate
Australia's character check (Department of Home Affairs) generally asks for a police certificate from each country where a person has lived 12 months or more (cumulatively) in the last 10 years, since the age of 16.
For Venezuela, the document is the Certificado de Antecedentes Penales, issued by the Ministry of People's Power for Interior Relations, Justice and Peace. It can generally be requested online by someone who holds a Venezuelan national identity number; non-citizens can only obtain it if they hold that identity number.
The official Venezuelan portal may be unavailable from abroad. Rather than a direct link to the portal, see the Australian Embassy in Bogotá's page, which describes the procedure and points to the current source.
Venezuela is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention — a full Contracting State, with no objections. The competent authority is the Ministry of People's Power for Foreign Affairs (Office of Consular Relations), and Venezuela issues an electronic apostille.
Important: an apostille is not a requirement for lodging an Australian visa application. For the Department of Home Affairs, the usual requirement is a colour scan of the original document and its English translation (see below) — not an apostille. We include the apostille as general information on how Venezuelan documents are validated for official cross-border use.
In practice, the Venezuelan apostille and verification portals may not load from abroad; use the official links and check their availability.
The Department of Home Affairs asks for an English translation of any document that isn't in English. The rule depends on where the translation is done.
If the translation is done in Australia, a NAATI-accredited translator does it (the national accreditation authority for translators and interpreters). If it's done outside Australia, the translator doesn't need NAATI accreditation, but states their full name, address, phone, and qualifications or experience, in English.
Venezuela's applications are handled by the Australian Embassy in Bogotá (Colombia). Visa applications are lodged online via ImmiAccount.
A specific point: currently, per the Australian Embassy in Bogotá, applicants from Venezuela do not need to provide biometrics. This differs from applicants from Colombia, who do attend a biometrics centre. As with everything, this can change — verify at the official source.