Seeking Notary Recommendation (US docs for foreign citizenship)

In my experience, you need those docs appostilled. RedTomatoes in Oakland is excellent for notarizing, California apostilling, LiveScan, and FBI fingerprinting in terms of cost, turnaround time, and communication. For fingerprinting, their machines are much higher-end than some local competitors, who will take your $100 only to tell you their machine can't pick up your worn-off fingerprints. I've done many rounds of fingerprinting all over town and settled on RedTomatoes because its guaranteed to work. www.monumentvisa.com is the best I've found for federal appostilling in terms of price, turnaround time, and communication.

We've gone to the notary at Payne's Stationery on Solano Avenue many times over the years for documents that we needed to submit to the German government for passports, children's name registration, bank accounts, etc. 

Getting notarized vs getting the notarized document recognized by foreign government are two separate topics. My guess is that you need to have the document recognized, which would require an Apostille stamp from the government. An apostille certifies the document(s), so the document can be recognized in foreign countries that are members of the 1961 Hague Convention Treaty.

We have friends whose kids were born in the States but want to retain their foreign citizenship, they had their document apostilled by the CA State government in Sacramento before sending over to their consulate. To do so, you first notarize the document by any public Notary (AAA would work in this case), and you then send in (by mail or in person drop box) the notarized document to the government to have it authenticated and get the apostille stamp. (It literally come back with a wax stamp) What the state does is that, they'd look into the registry and confirm said notary is indeed carried out by a qualified person. With this government seal, you can then send in the document over to foreign government, assuming Jamaica is part of the convention (I'd be surprised if it's not).

You can google Apostille CA state, and look for the link that's CA gov website, it should give you all the instructions.

California notary publics can only notarize signatures, not documents.

Hi there. Any notary should be fine, EXCEPT do not use the UPS in Emeryville! (The notary we had done there was not on file with the state and got sent back, and they refused to refund the $30 or so we paid them - so lame.) Jamaica may be different, but for our Italian citizenship, you needed to get your documents notarized (or get certified originals from authorizing agency such as county clerk) and have all those documents "apostilled" through CA Secretary of State (or through Sec of State of whatever state issued the documents). Getting things apolstilled through CA Sec of State has been a surprisingly easy process for us. You can go in person to Sacramento, but you can also mail in and it has been reliable and quick for us to do it this way. Apostilling is how most countries accept documents for international use, but perhaps Jamaica is different? If all they need is a notary, any notary should do, I would think.

try Payn’s Stationary in Albany— we recently got documents notarized there (they always have a notary available when the shop is open!)— super nice people and a pretty cool shop, too. 

If you are a Chase Bank customer, the downtown branch near the Downtown BART station has a notary that will notarize for customers for free. I’m not sure if they do these specific docs or not, but I would imagine it’s possible since they are a big bank.

Also, Payne’s Stationary on Solano in Albany has a notary. Again I don’t know if they do these specific docs but you could call.

Any California notary can handle all the same types of documents, but the key thing is that the notary certificate relates to the *signature* on the document and the identity of the person signing, not the document itself. We can't notarize a birth certificate, but we could notarize your sworn statement that the facts in an attached birth certificate are true and correct.  We could also notarize your signed passport application (though sometimes when dealing with forms coming from a different state or country, the notary needs to cross out the language provided for the notary certificate and instead attach an acknowledgement with the language required by California law).  In most situations where vital records are required, what you need is a "certified copy" issued by the applicable government agency.  If the consul requires a notarized affidavit from you, in addition to the government certification of the copies, you will need to prepare that yourself or get a lawyer's help. I'm afraid that a notary, as such, cannot prepare it for you.

I think the person who said apostille is correct.  We had to get documents apostilled because the foreign government required it for us to adopt our child.  We went to Sacramento, just to some window in some office, and they did it.  I think you can do it by mail but it takes longer.  It has a big gold sticker and looks very official.