Travel Question

[dleeg 2]

Hi everyone

We want to buy tickets for Colombia for Christmas. Will buy today or this weekend. Should my wife use her name on her passport or her married name on her green card? I thought someone here would know from experience.

Thanks for your help!

[ishakandsylvia12 1]

Hi everyone

We want to buy tickets for Colombia for Christmas. Will buy today or this weekend. Should my wife use her name on her passport or her married name on her green card? I thought someone here would know from experience.

Thanks for your help!

You must use your legal name that is on your passport for your ticket. IF the name on the passport is not the legal name you need to get it changed asap. I know from experience.

[DoneWaiting 15]

Totally Agree

You must use your legal name that is on your passport for your ticket. IF the name on the passport is not the legal name you need to get it changed asap. I know from experience.

[EminTX 131]

The legal name that is recognized in her home country is on her passport. It is also valid here. Until she has a US passport, this is the only name she should ever use for anything international.

The suggestion to just change your name in another country is a uneducated. It is not allowed in all places. When I get citizenship in Perú in the future, the "formula" for a person's name is set by law and is not necessarily related to my name here in the US.

Example: Sarah Smith Richardson here in the US could change to Sarah Elizabeth Smith Jones de Richardson in Perú. It is probably similar in Colombia. (The name formula is from the birth and marriage certificates.)

Not every country or culture changes the name upon marriage.

Moreover, if she does get US citizenship while still maintaining her Colombian citizenship, when she enters each country, she needs to use that passport--Colombian to enter Colombia and US to enter here.

Suggestion: Don't be stupid about name changes. If you plan to do it, make it sensible. I work in a very busy ER with a HUGE volume of non-citizens and the name game is a nightmare.

• "Hello, Ms Richardson?" (no answer)
  
• "Ms Sarah Richardson?" (Still no answer)
  
• (Scanning the crowd for someone with the injury that matches what you are planning to take care of) "Excuse me, are you Ms. Sarah Richardson?"
  
• "Ummm...oh yeah. hahaha...I been married 5 year and no remember husband name...hahaha"
  
• "Please state your name and birthday so that I can verify the information." (This is required and non-negotiable.)
  
• "Sarah Elizabeth."
  
• "Sarah Elizabeth? What is your name on your ID?"
  
• (Sarah hands the document to me--this always is suspicious for identity theft/fraud. Seriously...you can't remember your own damned name????) "No, you need to verbally verify your information."
  
• "Oh..." (The "sarah" looks down at her hospital wristband and reads it to me. I sigh deeply and take her with me for care.)
  

It is a real nightmare when the person is very injured or comes in with other ambulances and there are little kids involved that are separated from their parents. Privacy is a federal issue and in a big ER when you or your family is hurting, you don't want your silliness with your name-change at marriage to separate you or slow you down at all. Be practical.

I took both my husband's last names so that my official name here and my official name there will be very similar and hopefully no problems ever when the nitty gets gritty.

(BTW--some people confess to me every week that they are using false ID and just want whatever taken care of. I think every patient is fingerprinted -- a federal requirement for their databases, maybe.)

[Mononoke28 135]

Use the name she has on her passport, which is the name the airlines will check before boarding.

Diana

[Wayne and Claudia 40]

Hi everyone

We want to buy tickets for Colombia for Christmas. Will buy today or this weekend. Should my wife use her name on her passport or her married name on her green card? I thought someone here would know from experience.

Thanks for your help!

My wife has been back to Colombia twice since arriving here almost two years ago. Both times she used her Green Card name which is her married American name, not her native Colombian name. She has never had an issue either in Colombia or America. The only thing ever said to her was at the end of July this year when whe was returning from her last trip to Colombia. The immigration officer reminded her that she would need to file her "next set of paperwork" (her I-751) very soon. If you are nervous use the passport name but in our case it has really never been an issue.