parents green card- birth certificate ques

[desigirl1]

I am a US citizen appying for my parents GC. In my birth certificate the parents' name spelling is incorrect and only their first name is mentioned. Will this be acceptable for their GC application? How can i get my birth certificate corrected to include their full name with correct spelling. Thanks

[ifra]

You could have it corrected by your country of birth at the issuing authority (this means government department) that issued your original birth certificate. However when it’s corrected it’s gonna have a new issue date so be aware of that.

To put it simply this is not that big of an issue, I’ve had dozens of clients who had an incorrect birth certificate and they all got their parents case approved pretty easily. Be it an incorrect city of birth location or name misspellings. So long as the name isn’t spelled too dramatically different from the name on your parents passports then is should be fine. The most likely scenario is that the USCIS will see the country of origin and decide whether or not they can trust the document based on the country it’s from (This just depends on the country of birth’s government stability, since countries with more stable governments are trusted more because their government facilities are more organized). And even if the USCIS decides that they can’t trust the validity of the birth certificate that’s OK too because they don’t deny your application based on that reason instead they’ll just ask you for something called a request for evidence in which case you’re supposed to complete a DNA test or send them an affidavit of birth or both depending on what they ask you in the request for evidence letter. The request of evidence also typically has a time limit which is usually 90 days and gives you more than enough time to get the requested evidence completed and sent to the USCIS before the deadline date listed on the RFE letter. And writing an affidavit of birth is very simple you just get two witnesses who were adults when you were born and can verify that your parents are the really ones that gave birth to you. It’s not that difficult to find two witnesses just ask your parents to ask their friends or neighbors and tell them to just sign the affidavit of birth. However this might not even be necessary since many of the cases I’ve sent to the USCIS with incorrect birth certificates were still approved and transferred to the national Visa Center without a request for evidence. Typically when I got a request for evidence for one of my clients it was because they came from a country like Afghanistan or or Libya or other countries that are dealing with war and therefore cannot be trusted in terms of the certificates they issue.

So I’d suggest that you just send the forms with the required evidence documents (always send copies not original documents) to the USCIS and wait for them to respond with either an approval letter or request for evidence letter.

And if you’re still worried just add an affidavit of birth certificate to the applications preemptive and you’ll be fine. An Affidavite Of Birth Certificate is pretty simple to create just Google some samples online or go to the USCIS website and follow the listed guidelines for the affidavit of birth to give yourself an idea of what to write when typing out the document and then email it to your parents who will print it out and have two of their friends who can knew about your birth when it happened simply sign it in front of a notary in their country (and tell them to bring their ID’s since a Notary has to see the ID of any witnesses signing it). You can find notaries in every country around the world mostly in banks so tell them to go to a local bank in their city. Or even better if you have two adults living in America that you know who can verify that you really are the son of your parents then just have those two witnesses in America sign an affidavit of birth in front of a notary in your current city. Once again even in America you can find a notary anywhere just go to a local bank like Wells Fargo or Chase and they can Notarize it for you (just make sure that the two witnesses go to the bank with you since they have to sign it in front of notary for it to be stamped and notarized).

All in all don’t stress too much and focus on sending the documents as soon as you can because the most important thing is to send them so that the priority date can be earlier, and if they ask for any evidence just send it to them later.


All the best,
-ifra