Visa Appointments For Us Citizen - How Bad Is It?

jdr7137

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My husband and I will go to Buenos Aires next week to meet with our lawyer and for my husband's visa appointment. I have a work visa through my employer and got it in the United States before we moved to Argentina. We are in the process of getting a visa for my husband, he is now only on a tourist visa while they work on his residency visa.

There has already been some problems with our marriage certificate - I changed my name after marriage (like is common in the US) but the government in BA doesn't like that my maiden name is on our marriage certificate. Also they don't like that what they have (apostilled, translated into Spanish isn't our original marriage certificate - our original was issued by the deputy clerk and not the judge so it couldn't be apostilled hence we got the certified fancy copy.

Our lawyer told us we should plan to be in BA 4-5 days for the process. I'm bringing my original marriage certificate too, though it doesn't and cannot be apostilled. Has anyone done this process before and can give advice? I imagine we will be sitting in some offices for at least 1-2 days just waiting, based at least on my experience in the US.

Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!
 
my experience getting my permanant visa might help you.....i have had 4 different last names over the years.....and after going through lots of time and money getting official documents then getting them translated down here by official translator,,,,,all to no avail , finally i met a nice immigration officer who advised that i get my visa under my birth name (fathers last name)...there fore i only had to have my official birth certificate translated....so now my us passport is under my married name and my dni and visa are under my birthname, and i have had no problems with airline tickets, other business.....i think it is common in argentina for women to go by their birth name, so everyone understands.....hope this helps and good luck! so much depends on the worker you get....
 
Hard to believe they are still doing this. I can't address the issue of not having an unapostilled marriage certificate, but Argentina did NOT like my married name being different from my birth certificate name. This was several years ago though so I'd think they'd been through this enough times by now that it would not still be coming up. They insisted I fix it so the names would be the same. So I contacted the Secretary of State in Florida to tell them I needed a passport in the same name as my birth certificate. He told me this is my legal name in the State of Florida, and that to change it would require going to court and changing it legally. I had an Argentina attorney explain it to them and so they told me "okay, but you're going to have a lot of trouble with it here." So far I have had no trouble at all. Maybe I will--but I have not. But all my paperwork and documents here are in the same name as my birth certificate. Good luck. I know you'll get it all worked out but not without frustration. Fortunately I have always had an attorney in the process and when I would get upset they would tell me not to worry, that everything can be fixed and it will all work out. And it always did.
 
Thank you! My attorney is doing a good job, he is explaining everything to them and hoping we can get this settled. I already have my visa in my passport with my current name, so I think I'm set (especially since I won't be renewing my visa and leaving after my 12 months here are up) its just getting them to believe my husband is my husband and not my brother or something.
 
....so now my us passport is under my married name and my dni and visa are under my birthname, and i have had no problems with airline tickets, other business.....

I recently got married here in BA to a porteno not realizing that if I wanted to change my name to my husband's I would need to do it at that moment, and not afterwards like in the states. So I've been debating on what to do. Whether to apply for residency right now with my maiden name and maintain Argentine residency with my maiden name, and then after that process is finished legally change my name in the states.

Or change my name then begin the residency process, but as you girls are saying is what I expected, that they would give me hell for having a different name as my birth certificate.

So if my US Passport and my Argentine DNI don't match up...that's ok? Ya'll really haven't had any problems with it?

Is it possible for me to do a legal name change later on here (like we can in the states) after I have my DNI so I have my husband's last name everywhere? Sorry, I do plan on talking to a lawyer about this but getting any first hand advice is also so helpful! Thanks!
 
If you are only here for a year - why are you bothering to deal with the headache of getting your husband a visa? 12 months on a tourist visa is definitely the easiest route.
 
I recently got married here in BA to a porteno not realizing that if I wanted to change my name to my husband's I would need to do it at that moment, and not afterwards like in the states. So I've been debating on what to do. Whether to apply for residency right now with my maiden name and maintain Argentine residency with my maiden name, and then after that process is finished legally change my name in the states.

Or change my name then begin the residency process, but as you girls are saying is what I expected, that they would give me hell for having a different name as my birth certificate.

So if my US Passport and my Argentine DNI don't match up...that's ok? Ya'll really haven't had any problems with it?

Is it possible for me to do a legal name change later on here (like we can in the states) after I have my DNI so I have my husband's last name everywhere? Sorry, I do plan on talking to a lawyer about this but getting any first hand advice is also so helpful! Thanks!

Well, naming here is different in the USA. Here, your husband's name gets appended to yours. You can't get rid of your maiden name, it's yours til death. Let's say your name is Irina Smith and your husband's is Juan Garcia. You now are Irina Smith de Garcia, as we see with our president. Personally I never liked the possessive form with the "de" so I've never changed mine.

The changing it "in the moment" thing was because that is how they would have registered your name on your marriage document. To do it now I guess you'd have to go to the Registro Civil and do a tramite, but they won't drop the Smith, they'll just add the de Garcia. As far as I've been able to find out for you, dropping your maiden name is really only something you can do informally these days. I don't know that the de Garcia gets added onto DNIs, or if the apellido of the marido really only gets added onto the register of marriage.

As for if you have children, by law they will carry the double apellido, with the father's name preceding -- they will therefore be Garcia Smith's. When they marry and have their own child, the Smith gets dropped and the mother of their children's name gets added.

If you try changing your name in the USA before hand, I assume it would just be so that your DNI gets issued as "Garcia" instead of "Smith de Garcia"? If your birth certificate is issued in Smith, I think this will be a big pain when you present paperwork. I personally woudn't do it, but for me having my husband's name was never important, and for me I am very happy that my child carries my last name as well, rather than just his.


Edited to add link to doc:
http://www.sdh.gba.gov.ar/comunicacion/normativanacyprov/pueblosoriginarios/nacional/nac_ley18248.pdf

I'd find out about having "husband's last name everywhere" -- I don't think it is like in the USA, I think you always have the maiden name legally.
 
hmm also just thought of something... since any children born of this partnership in Argentina will have the double barrelled last name, if you change your name in the states does that mean that a child of yours would end up being So-and-So Garcia Garcia.... jaja, might want to ask the lawyer that one!
 
Thanks syngirl!

I really want to have the same last name as my family (I know it's all just semantics but it's how I always imagined things would be. maybe it's small, but it's not something I want to sacrifice), and like you I don't like the possessiveness of the "de Garcia". I guess go through the residencia tramite before doing any name change to avoid any hassling about my birth certificate etc and see what I can do afterwards...we know a few lawyers so one of them know something or know someone who does, if I find anything out I'll post it here.

Regarding the double barrelled name that's just an option that has been presented in the recent years, as far as I know it's not a requirement. But I did know a guy in Spain who was named Fancisco Munoz Munoz because his not-related parents had the same last name haha so it can happen.
 
I am married to an Argentine and we have 3 kids. Informally we are all the same surname (to carry on the example, Garcia Smith). Formally, my husband is Garcia, I am Smith, my kids are Garcia Smith. However, to all of our family back in New Zealand, we are the Garcia Smith family. If we were ever to live in New Zealand, my husband would happily add my surname to his because he thinks it's incredible that I would want to take on his in the first place.
My grandparents refuse to address me as Angela Smith, as it is 'not done' for a married woman to keep her own last name (at least not in their generation).
At the time we got married, I looked at changing my surname to Garcia, but I would have had to go through so much trouble with my Argentine paperwork it wasn't worth it. The point of this post is to say that at heart, our whole family knows who we are, we're the Garcia Smiths. What my paperwork says is something completely different to this, but far less important to me.
 
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