I was thinking about getting a credit card for my wife here in Romania so that we can start building up her credit over in the states while we are over here finishing up our work and applying for her visa.

Well she did a 3 month work exchange last year in America where she was given an Social Security number (SSI number) in order for her to receive her paycheck.

So my question is could I use that SSI number in adding her onto my credit card or will she receive another SSI number once she has received her visa/arrived in the US/filed for an adjustment of status.
Regardless of where a new SSI number would come from my main question is if that original one that she received last year (2006) would still be her number next year (2008) or not.

I ask this because when I talked to USCIS Vienna that made a comment that once an SSI number has been given out it stays with that person unless they die. This somehow sounds wrong to me and I would like to make sure that this is correct before I try to use it to add her to my account.

Yes, Once SSA issues a person a number, that number is their's for life, it never expires.

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10002.html

Well I guess this leads to a second and a third question. Will the credit card company issue a card to her in her new married name even though her SSI number is in her maiden name?Also will they grant it if that original SSI was originally given for temporay work purposes?

We are not in the US and we dont have her visa yet to apply for apply for a change in Status for her SSI.

Keep in mind this going onto my account I am not opening up a new account for her.

As far as I know the credit card company only needs to see a number, they have no way of checking name against the number, also they don't know that it was granted for work purpose, only that it is a valid number, which it is.

thamks a lot I appreciate your help

Fo, you might get the same result from adding her to one of your accounts.
I did this with my husband (can't have a Joint account, but an authorised user) and his credit score was very quickly near as high as mine!
It may be difficult to get her her own credit card account if she doesn't live in the US.

I was added to my husband's card with my maiden name still on my SS card, and it was no big deal.

yeah that was basically what I was gonna do. When I worked in America I saw tons of immigrants trying to get credit in their name for the sake of getting credit (not that they needed the credit) and almost all were denied like you said. They were mostly denied because of no former credit history and I figured that if I get her on as an authorized user she can begin to have a credit history and then from there start getting her own credit.

One of the reasons I wanna do it now is because I know that when they look at credit history I know that they take the amount of years of credit into account and so I thiought might as well try to start getting it one year earlier.

Thanks everybody for your help

Fofire