What original documentation for passport application?

[steffi]

So my wife was told she needs to get translations of originals signed/sealed by our local consulate and then when she goes to submit her application she's also told that she needs to submit _originals_ of documents that were used for the translation. What's the point of needing to submit originals that they cannot read when a consulate already has certified the translations from those originals?

I mean does it not make sense that the whole point of the consulate sealing the translation is to check the authenticity of the originals and requiring the originals of these documents just creates big problems when you consider that replacing them should they get lost is non-trivial.

I understand that replacing a naturalization certificate is easy since we're in the country that issued them and so requiring the original of that is understandable what isn't though is requiring originals of documentation that was translated and those translations sealed by the consulate.

 

[Huracan]

Does this involve any sort of name change? It is not clear from your post. In my case we didn't need to translate anything, just sent the application alongside our naturalization certificate. Why do you need to send all this, is this a special case?

 

[steffi]

Any name change is prior to naturalization certificate. In fact it's prior to her green card application from way back when.

Here's what happened.

I called another post office and they didn't want to contradict another post office so they wouldn't answer any questions but they told me to call the passport agency so I did and they told me that no name change documentation was necessary and that all they needed was proof of citizenship. This is _after_ my wife's submitted her application including documentation that would be near impossible to replace if it's lost and it turns out is totally unnecessary despite the fact that the post office wouldn't accept her application without that documentation.

So, postal employees simply don't know anything about this process and go about their lives in such a way that any answer they give will and cannot be used against them in the future so they have absolutely no incentive to think before answering questions and instead of saying oh we're not sure but you can all this number they just make the rules up and tell you that if things go wrong it's not our fault.

Postal employees just don't think logically about anything.

They figure that if you need to submit the original naturalization certificate that you do in fact have to submit all other documentation as originals. and if something needs to be translated and certified that the thing that was translated also needs to be submitted as an original and not a copy. They don't appreciate that for a first time applicant that as long as the name hasn't changed since they got their naturalization certificate that any previous name change is completely irrelevant to a passport application. They think that if you need to submit documentation to support name change because your old passport has a different name that those same rules should apply to a new application as well. Personally the application form doesn't make this clear at all since it doesn't distinguish for when it's necessary to supply documentation and leaves that up to the officer accepting your application.

 

[Huracan]

I think I get it now. You had to send all that unnecessary documentation to the passport agency because of an overzealous passport agent. I hope you get everything back. I am still confused about one point. You mention an old passport with a different name. Was this the case for your wife? Did she have a previous US passport under a different name?
Anyway, for a first time passport with a naturalization certificate that has the name that you want to appear in the passport there should be no need for additional documents or translated/sealed consular documents. This is what the passport agency told you, but I guess it was a bit too late for you because you have already sent the application. As I said, I hope you get your original documents back.

 

[steffi]

No there wasn't a previous passport. This is her first US passport that she's applying for. So, the point I'm making is that because in cases where a name change has happened after a previous passport was issued it's necessary to support that name change and therefore the postal employees think that it all cases name change documentation is required whenever there's been a name change regardless of whether it happened prior to the naturalization certificate/previous passport being issued or not.

I called this post office multiple times and instead of telling me to call the passport agency because they don't think they are 100% correct they chose to not to. It's very frustrating because when you call to rationalize their conclusions they take offence because you are second guessing them. I'm especially offended that even when I called another postal branch as soon as they knew I had already received an opinion from another branch they refused to tell me anything. They wouldn't even comment on what the actual policy was for fear of undermining another branch.

All the time I had the suspicion they were wrong but didn't think I could call up the passport agency and get an answer from them. The passport agency told me that if I had called them originally they could have given me an address whereby I could avoid the postal employees because even if I had told them they were wrong and that that came from the passport agency they wouldn't have accepted our application.

 

[Huracan]

On hindsight you should have just dumped the first post office and go to another one without telling them you had already got an opinion from the first post office. Just basically get there with your computer filled DS-11 the naturalization certificate, the drivers license and that's it. Usually the advice here is that if you don't get what you want in one post office it pays trying in another one. Not all the post offices are completely consistent. I agree with you that it was not necessary to send the name change documentation when the naturalization certificate had already been issued under the new name.