Traveling on GC while I-90 is pending

[Amhara 460]

Hello all,

My husband needs to get his name corrected on his conditional I-551. We have recently changed his name legally, and his passport is the old handwritten style. Although it's not set to expire until 2018, I don't know if it's still valid for international travel purposes. (I know the airlines were expected to reject handwritten passports late last year, but I don't know if that plan was extended or not.)

Because of class schedules, I don't know when we will be able to get him a new Afghan passport, but I would prefer to get him a new passport before we need to get an I-551 stamp to return the erroneous GC. (We filed the I-90 online and still have the GC in our possession.) But the thing is, I'm hoping to get some dental work done down in Mexico and would cross the land border. Would my husband be able to come with me? Or would he need to stay on the US side because his GC doesn't match his other documents? Can he travel and return on the erroneous GC?

I'm not quite sure of the sequence of the events we should tackle too. The Afghan embassy wants a copy of his GC when we apply for his new passport, so should we give a copy while it's still incorrect or will that not matter? The way I see it, we have these issues to take care of:

1. Get conditional GC corrected - in progress; unknown completion date
2. Get new Afghan passport - not started; three weeks to complete
3. Get I-551 stamped in whichever passport we have at the time - not started; probably una dia

Any suggestions will be helpful! Thank you!

[teeak 224]

Yep, as of Nov 25, 2015, countries are not required to accept handwritten passport. http://www.murthy.com/2016/02/01/passport-requirements-changed-25-nov-2015-20-year-indian-passports-should-be-replaced/

According to the embassy website in DC, it says the passport should take 5-7 business days. I think you can go ahead and apply for the passport with the conditional green card. Just provide evidence of the legal name change and a receipt notice stating that you're in the process of getting a new green card.

http://www.embassyofafghanistan.org/page/passport

Since 5-7 days is a relatively short time, it is probably best to get the stamp in the machine readable passport to avoid getting stopped by an airline.

I think it should be fine for him to travel to Mexico as long as he has legal evidence of his name change. Plenty of people travel with a copy of their marriage certificate to evidence their name discrepancy.

[Amhara 460]

I think it should be fine for him to travel to Mexico as long as he has legal evidence of his name change. Plenty of people travel with a copy of their marriage certificate to evidence their name discrepancy.

That's a good point. It may help that my last name is on the green card, so we should take a copy of the marriage certificate too. Since everything is computerized, maybe his fingerprints matching with his GC profile will help too. Looks like we should start with the new passport first, then go from there.

Thank you!

[teeak 224]

Yep, no worries! I would also suggest taking a copy of the I90 receipt notice just so you can show that you're in the process of getting an updated GC.