Indian Birth Certificate rears its ugly head again!

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sudhany

Registered Users (C)
Hi everyone--

My Indian birth certificate doesn't have my name on it. It has my parents' names (my mom's name is slightly misspelled), my dad's occupation (but not my mom's), the date, time and location of my birth, the fact that I am a female etc., but in the place where my name should be, there is a dash. This appears to be a rather common problem with Indian birth certificates -- because children in India are often not named until much later. In any case, this issue came up while I submitted my AOS application and, upon the advice of several people, including an Immigration Officer I spoke to at an Infopass appointment before submitting everything, I decided to get notarized affidavits from both my parents stating my name and all the other relevant details of my birth. Everything seemed to be fine, we didn't get an RFE and have been scheduled for an interview on November 20.

Today I went to another Infopass appointment about other issues and the officer offered to look through my documents to make sure everything was fine for the interview. She seemed to think that the BC issue was a big one, and said that the affidavits from my parents weren't any good. She said to get something from my elementary school or from the priest at the temple we used to go to when I was a child. Both of these things would be very difficult to do, especially from so far away. She also said I could get affidavits from others besides my parents -- a neighbor or someone like that who knew about my birth, came to see me at the hospital right after birth etc. I do think this can be arranged, though it's not going to be very easy.

My question is: how seriously should I take the officer's advice? We don't have all that much time left, and getting these various documents is going to be a serious hassle. Anyone else face such a problem? What did you do? I would appreciate any advice you have.

Thanks so much.

By the way, I did manage to find out at Infopass today that my FBI namecheck has cleared. One less thing to worry about!
 
Is there any other certificate given to children in India when the name is finally decided by the parents?...there's got to be some BC with your name somewhere.
how did you get your passport..or the F-1...
anyways....when i did my AOS interview they did not request to see my BC. I thought they might ask me why my BC had two last names (dad' and mom's) together...and not the dad's only. But they did not.
Wish you luck...but worst case scenario they might schedule for a second interview when you get some other docs.
 
Thanks, guys. Machelon, first of all, there isn't much documentation about many things in India. Where there is, the main document used to establish name and date of birth is the secondary school-leaving certificate, which usually shows name and date of birth and also the father's name (though not the mother's, of course!) This is what we used to get my passport. And for the F1, at least way back then in 1992, no BC was required.

My parents have my school-leaving certificate and are sending it. They're also going to try to see if they can get an amended birth certificate for me from the health department of the city where I was born. I'm hoping this will obviate the need for any secondary documents. I'll post here about their experiences, so there can be a record of what one can do in such cases --at least with respect to Indian BCs. Ari4u also has a nice discussion of what to do in cases of birth certificate difficulties, but his solution (getting affidavits from parents) might still not be good enough, at least according to the folks at Infopass.

Thanks again, everyone, and good luck!
 
I have the same issue....my parents sent me a scanned version of my birth certificate...the quality is pretty good and it is in English, but it doesn't have my name, and my mom's name is slightly mis-spelled.

Did you have any problems with it? Do I need to get it notarized or can I simply print the scanned copy and send that?

Thanks!


sudhany said:
Hi everyone--

My Indian birth certificate doesn't have my name on it. It has my parents' names (my mom's name is slightly misspelled), my dad's occupation (but not my mom's), the date, time and location of my birth, the fact that I am a female etc., but in the place where my name should be, there is a dash. This appears to be a rather common problem with Indian birth certificates -- because children in India are often not named until much later. In any case, this issue came up while I submitted my AOS application and, upon the advice of several people, including an Immigration Officer I spoke to at an Infopass appointment before submitting everything, I decided to get notarized affidavits from both my parents stating my name and all the other relevant details of my birth. Everything seemed to be fine, we didn't get an RFE and have been scheduled for an interview on November 20.

Today I went to another Infopass appointment about other issues and the officer offered to look through my documents to make sure everything was fine for the interview. She seemed to think that the BC issue was a big one, and said that the affidavits from my parents weren't any good. She said to get something from my elementary school or from the priest at the temple we used to go to when I was a child. Both of these things would be very difficult to do, especially from so far away. She also said I could get affidavits from others besides my parents -- a neighbor or someone like that who knew about my birth, came to see me at the hospital right after birth etc. I do think this can be arranged, though it's not going to be very easy.

My question is: how seriously should I take the officer's advice? We don't have all that much time left, and getting these various documents is going to be a serious hassle. Anyone else face such a problem? What did you do? I would appreciate any advice you have.

Thanks so much.

By the way, I did manage to find out at Infopass today that my FBI namecheck has cleared. One less thing to worry about!
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