My EAD/AP combo card travel experience at Chicago airport

[Loving_girl 38]

Hi,

My wife will be traveling to Ukraine soon in a similar situation. She is concerned about what paperwork she will need on the back when she is leaving Ukraine. She is also concerned that they will want to have her change her name on the passport. Can you tell us a little about this?

Thanx - K

Hi,

I wanted to change my last name in the travel passport, for that due to Ukrainian Laws we need to do as follows: 1. Have marriage papers with Apostile and translated into ukrainian and certified by a notary. 2. With internal Ukrainian passport and marriage docs she goes to OVIR (now it's called Immigration agency or something like that) and she pays legal fee for new passport issuance and fills some forms. Due to the laws OVIR issues a new passport in 30 days. (My situation was as follows, marriage papers from the USA did not had the line stating as follows: After marriage legal name is changed into XXXXX CCCC (name, patronymic, new last name) thus in OVIR they said they can not change my last name, they gave me an option of going to civil registry and ask for a Name Change form, its basically I myself decide to change my last name and government issues a new certificate of birth, which for me was not an option, the Name Change was suppose to take up to 10 days and with that form I go back to OVIR and change my passport in married name. In OVIR i was given an option to change my passport if I had all docs in 7 days, it was not a bribery, I simply explained my situation that I needed to apply for foreign passport too, so people were very helpful. So in the end I stayed with my maiden name and did my travel passport on maiden name.

IF she has USA marriage papers with the phrase about legal name change (in our state they do not provide papers with such phrase) she does the following:

1. Translated with Apostile marriage papers she brings to OVIR with internal passport, pays fees and files papers. Waits up to 30 days for the new passport;

2. Goes to Tax payers organization to switch her last name on Tax Payer Identification number (this takes 1 day)

3. Takes new internal passport, old travel passport and Tax Identification number to the agency that issues travel passports, pays the fees and waits for the passport to be issued. (This may take 10 days - fast procedure or 30 days regular procedure). (To take into account, from 2007 in Ukraine the names transliteration rules were changed, so if she has a name that should be transliterated (written as in old travel passport) she needs to present docs that confirm the reason why she needs old way name written (I had this issue cos my passport was issued before 2007, so they changed the way my name is written in Latin letters, so I presented marriage docs from the USA where my name is written the way I want it to be in the new passport, so there were no issues what so ever. All easy, waited 10 days for the new passport).

My opinion: I would not recommend name change in Ukrainian docs as far as its a hassle for no reasons, you/she needs to understand that we have legal ties with our country, such as registration in the houses/apartments under maiden names, bank accounts etc, so it means after the legal name change she needs to update all the info in all institutions. I would recommend just to stay in maiden name and simply do new travel passport if her old one is about to expire.

As for leaving from Ukraine, I am from Kiev, so all i described took place over there. I was leaving Ukraine from Boryspil airport, I had my air tickets on maiden name both ways, in the airport i showed tickets, passport, EAD AP card (on married name) and officer asked to show docs that prove name change on EAD AP card, so I showed marriage papers with translation and Apostile. All was quick, no extra question from the officer.