I'm a Bulgarian Resident!

Quite a while ago, my wife and I decided that some point after her immigration process was completed for the United States, we would move to Bulgaria and I would go through the same process here. It’s been a long time in the making, but I’m finally done the biggest initial step.

United States

In the United States, the process to get residency via marriage is (relatively) simple, especially if you have grounds to enter the country already (the K-1 “fiancé(e) visa” is typical). Once in-country and married, you apply for a change of status to permanent resident (form I-485) and if/when approved, you receive your “Green Card” (or Permanent Resident Card).

All of these steps are clearly documented on the USCIS website, along with an instruction PDF along with each form PDF. The instructions outline what fields need to be filled out and what supporting evidence needs to be included with each form submission. In retrospect, the hardest part about the process is the waiting. So. Much. Waiting.

Bulgaria

The process in Bulgaria is much quicker, although the bureaucracy of it all is much more complicated, and much of it is not documented for my particular case, which is as a “third-country”¹ spouse of a Bulgarian citizen. Most “third-country” immigration documentation and anecdotes that you can find online are regarding coming to Bulgaria on grounds for work, in which you would be progressing towards the “Единното разрешение за пребиваване и работа (ЕРПР)” or “Single Work and Residence Permit (SWRP)”. This permit ties your residence closely to your employer, and requires that the employer submits numerous documents to support your permit. Naturally, this means you already have to have a potential employer that has agreed to hire you and work through this process.

For my case, Bulgaria has the residence grounds of “familial reunion” which basically means a non-citizen family member is coming to Bulgaria to live with the Bulgarian citizen.

The general process in this situation is to get your marriage registered in Bulgaria, apply for a “D” (Long Stay) Visa, arrive in Schengen/Bulgaria on that visa (even if you do not need a visa to generally enter Schengen/Bulgaria), and then apply for Temporary Residence. Let’s start with the marriage certificate.

Marriage certificate

We took care of this step long before moving to Bulgaria, but if you haven’t, it’s probably easier logistically to have a separate registered marriage in Bulgaria with no ties to the original marriage.

We were married in the United States, and once my wife got her Green Card, she ended up with 2 different names on international documents. Her US Green Card (and other US institutions) had her married name, while her Bulgarian passport and ID card had her maiden name. This was never a huge issue, but did add some extra time at passport control when flying back into the US. The only way to get her name changed on her Bulgarian identification would be to get married in Bulgaria.

We opted to just have our US marriage registered in Bulgaria, so our first step was to request a certified copy of our marriage certificate from the US county we got married in (see the process for Worcester County, MD here), and then send it to the state-level Department of State to be internationally certified, usually referred to as an “apostille” (see the process for Maryland here). Your process for getting an apostilled marriage certificate will almost certainly be different than ours. Once we had this completed, we sent the certificate and apostille with some friends who are also from Blagoevgrad to be left at a local translator company. There are several translation services available in the United States for this as well.

Once we traveled to Bulgaria, our documents were ready to be picked up. We took them to the city hall where we applied for a Bulgarian marriage certificate based on our US marriage, which was issued in my wife’s married name. This let her get a new Bulgarian passport and ID card, and it also validated the marriage in Bulgaria as grounds for me to obtain a visa and residency.

“D” (Long Stay) Visa

In order to enter Bulgaria (or the Schengen as is more likely now) for the purpose of getting residency, you will need to obtain a “D” visa which allows you to stay in the country for up to 6 months. You will need to show this visa to passport control at the Schengen border, even if you are eligible for visa-free entry normally.

For this step, you will need to travel to the Bulgarian Embassy or Consulate in your country.

For the United States, there are 3 Consulates and 1 Embassy, and the country is divided into regions around each one. This page has the addresses of all 4 locations and the regions that each is responsible for. You must go to the correct one based on your US state-issued DL/ID card. You need to call and make an appointment for a date in the future. I called the embassy in Washington, DC to schedule an appointment about 2 months out and they had openings for my first-choice date, but your experience may vary. For all the supporting documents they require, you generally have to provide both the original (which they return to you) and a photocopy (which they keep). They were able to make a copy that I was missing, but don’t count on it.

The documents I provided are listed on this page:

1. Passport and photocopy of identification page
   This is rather straight-forward. The passport should have been issued within the last 10 years, have at least 2 blank visa/stamp pages, and should expire at least 3 months after the expected visa expiration date (I would suggest to renew your passport first if it will expire within 1 year)

2. Original and photocopy of any existing Bulgarian, Schengen, or US visa or residence document
   I had none of these, so I did not provide anything for this

3. Passport-style photo
   The embassy website states this should be the European standard size of 3.5 × 4.5cm, but I submitted a US standard 2in × 2in photo. They took my picture at the embassy anyway along with fingerprints, so it didn’t seem to matter in my case. If you feel like it, you can probably just trim your US-sized photo to the European size.

4. Reason for visa
   In my case, this was our Bulgarian marriage certificate. I brought the original, a photocopy, and I also brought a certified copy (and photocopy) of our US marriage certificate. They did ask for this, since our Bulgarian certificate was issued based on the US certificate, so I’m glad I brought it. Because my reason was a marriage, I also needed a photocopy of my wife’s Bulgarian passport and ID.

5. Medical insurance covering a minimum of €30,000
   I purchased mine from Euromedins. When buying, there was an option to get a “blue stamped” certified copy of the insurance coverage. You won’t need this stamp for the visa (just a regular printout worked fine for me), but the residence permit will require it, so be sure to pay a little extra for the “blue stamped” version now.

6. Proof of financial means
   You have to show that you have the funds available to cover the minimum wage for every month of your visa (which is usually 6 months). At this time (May 2026), the total amount needed is €620.21 × 6 = €3721.26. I was able to show a bank statement with this much money, and I also provided a credit card statement showing at least this much credit available. I’m not sure if that was even valid or needed, but they took it.

7. Proof of housing/accommodation
   This is generally a notarized deed or lease along with an affidavit from the owner stating that you will be residing and registered at the address. In my case, I had to show a copy of the deed for property owned by my wife and her family, along with an affidavit from my wife, her sister, and her mother. They will send an employee of the Migration Directorate to the location to verify it is real and ready to be inhabited.

8. FBI background check with apostille
   Presumably, if you’re not from the US, you will need an equivalent country-level criminal history from your country. In the US, this is a big one and will likely take a few weeks. You start by going to the FBI’s Identity History Summary Checks website. You can opt to have your fingerprints taken on paper at a police station and then mail them in (which will take about 3 weeks to get results), or you can prepare to have them taken digitally at a post office where the background check results will come back almost immediately. The PDF you get by email is exactly the same as the one you receive in the mail, so you can begin the next step right away (there’s no raised seal or anything to worry about).

   Once you have the results, you need to get them certified with an apostille. As a future note, you will need to supply another background check when you apply for the residence permit, so submit 2 copies of your background check to get apostilled. For the US, getting an apostille for your background check involves a request to the Department of State. Fill out this form, and you can opt to either mail it in along with the documents to the address provided in the PDF, or you can visit the Office of Authentications in Washington, DC at 600 19th Street NW 7:30am-9am Monday through Thursday. For in-person, the package is usually ready for pickup about a week later, and if you don’t pick it up, they will mail it to the address on the form. If you go the mail-in route, everything will be returned about 3 weeks later. The background check (not the apostille) must be less than 6 months old when submitted for the visa and residence permit.

At this point, you should have all the required documents as well as an appointment at an embassy or consulate. Next, you need to fill out the actual visa application. It is available here from the Visa for Bulgaria website.

The appointment itself is very straightforward. Hand them the application, your passport, and all the documents. They will go through them, hand some things back, and if everything is in order, they should take your picture and fingerprints and let you on your way. If you are applying for the visa as a spouse, the application fee is waived and you should pay nothing this visit.

You should be informed of the visa decision 30-60 days later by phone and email. In my case, they asked me if I would like to send my passport to them to have the visa put in, or if I wanted to go back to the office in-person. I was also able to choose which date I wanted the visa to begin, so I could plan my travel around that. I mailed in my passport and they received it, put the visa in, and mailed it back within 24 hours. The total time without my passport was, to the best of my recollection, approximately 5 days.

A little over a month later, I entered the Schengen area in Frankfurt, Germany and made sure to point out the visa to the border agent. Remember the Schengen entry stamp you get, as this is needed for the residence permit application.

Come back next time for the continuing process for the residence permit!

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