Requesting Advice on Filing K1 Petition for Fiancee...

[trakon2002]

Hello

Im sure some of this has already been asked before, but I am new to this forum and would like to tap some of your experiences in the visa/immigration process.
As for me I have known my fiancee now for 9 months, gone through meeting family on Leyte and courtship ( I have taken two trips to spend time with her there). She lives in Cebu at this time. Once we became engaged and I began researching requirements for immigration, I found out she had 3 mistakes on her Birth Certificate. One was her first name mispelled, 2cd was her day of birth was off by 3 days and 3rd her year of birth was off by two years.
She talked to several local attorneys and found the process to correct the dates to be long and expensive. Also some immigration services I contacted and asked questions said it would be expensive and long to correct. I also verified Philippine law on this and found only a court can change a birth certificate other than an obvious typo error. So we were advised to live with the incorrect dates on the birth certificate. This leads to my requests for assistance. My fiancee is 19 soon to be 20 in Nov, but according to birth certificate this is not correct. She has school and church baptismal records to verify her age. (I was told the midwife didnt get along with her mother and they feel she reported in incorrectly to locak doctor who passed onto NSO.)
So with the I129F petition taking so long and the subsequent backlog in the Manila consolate, does anyone see why I couldnt file I129F before her birthday in Nov 2006. By the time they process it she will be 18 by the birth certificate?
Also does anyone have a suggestion on how to correct birth certificate that I have'nt found?
Finally does anyone have recommendations of an attorney or service they used and was helpful that I could use to help navigate the minefield and make the process as painless and quickly as possible?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If you can be assistance and could email me I would appreciate it.

Thanks
Carl R
New Mexico
trakon2002@yahoo.com

[Ray]

Hi Carl,

Welcome aboard!

From my experience, I would say that at least 25-30% of Phil birth certificates have significant errors so they expect these things when you run all the documents through the embassy during the visa process. If you can answer a few questions for me maybe I can help you out better.

1. Do you have a copy of her birth certificate?
2. Is it the NSO certified version on security paper?
3. What is the date of birth listed on her Birth certificate?
4. What is the date that her birth certificate was registered?
5. What is the date of birth on her baptismal certificate?
6. What date was she baptized?
7. What is her date of birth on her school records?
8. Are the school records for first grade?

Normally, the midwife should have filed the birth certificate with the Local Civil Registrar’s Office (LCRO) and they should have submitted a copy to NSO in Manila. A doctor would not submit the certificate directly to NSO from my knowledge. Do you know if the LCRO birth cert and the NSO version are identical? They should be.

She may not have to wait for a court ordered correction to her birth cert if she has good back-up documentation. When there is a question about the accuracy of the info on the birth cert, the baptismal certificate is the next best proof of birth date because the church kept better records than the government and baptisms usually took place shortly after birth.

She can also get what they call a joint affidavit, sworn to by two persons, preferably non family members, who were either present at her birth or who had direct knowledge of her exact birth date at the time she was born and can attest to the correct date. A notary can prepare the joint affidavit without the help of an attorney. She can get more info about this from the LCRO where her birth was originally registered.

The baptismal certificate should be recently prepared with a signed statement as to its authenticity by a church official. She should also get clear photographs of the baptismal record book, one of the cover and one of the page on which her birth was recorded. The embassy occasionally asks for photos of the book, so it’s best to be prepared.

With good documentation, there is a good chance that her visa paperwork will pass without waiting for the court order. My wife’s NSO birth cert had her first name spelled wrong and they checked the wrong box for sex. Her visa went through O.K. with a joint affidavit attached to the NSO copy of her birth cert. She never corrected the error in court. If the passport office accepts her documentation, that is a big plus.

She does not have to be 18 years old when you submit the fiancée petition, but it would be better if she was. She only has to be old enough to legally marry in your state of residence at the time her visa is issued. However, she may have problems with the CFO and the embassy if she were under 18 when processing the visa stuff because they tend to ask a lot of questions. For the circumstances you described, I would go ahead and file the K-1 petition now and then have her try to have the birth record fixed officially through the court system as a backup just in case they demand a corrected version.

I would recommend that you not hire an attorney or visa service to process your petition. If you do your own income taxes, you can easily handle the visa paperwork.

Ray

[trakon2002]

Ray

Thankyou for advice. I will followup with Fiancee on your questions. I do know she was given quite the run around at the LCRO. She had gone to the NSO and they had told her that the LCRO could help her, she took a ferry to Leyte then Im not sure where she drove to but I know she was extremely upset and frustrated because they refused to help her do anything except insisting she get a lawyer to fix her problems.
Her take is everyone is out to get money from her with no assurances of help.
Right now she has resigned herself to just excepting incorrect birth certificate and use it as her new birth date and name.

I will post updates soon.

Carl Richardson

[Ray]

Her take is everyone is out to get money from her with no assurances of help.

Right now she has resigned herself to just excepting incorrect birth certificate and use it as her new birth date and name.

Carl,

Yes, it does seem that everyone is out to get your money over there. Also, be wary of those offering to “fix” the problem quickly for a fee, without going through all the regular channels.

Just going along with the erroneous birth certificate and using the wrong name and birth date to save trouble seems like a viable option on the surface. However, there could be big problems down the road if this isn’t thought through carefully. For example, she will have to list “all other names used” on her biographic data form and elsewhere and she will need to provide her birth date, with stiff penalties for falsifying info or concealing material facts. She may also need to answer some tough questions under oath during her visa interview.

I wouldn't do anything without all the facts. I strongly recommend that before going ahead with such a plan, make sure that you personally get copies of all relevant documents (NSO BC, LCRO BC, baptismal certificate, school records, etc.) so that you can see for yourself exactly what you are dealing with first.

Depending on listed data and filing dates, it may impractical to use the “incorrect” birth certificate. Just be very careful here. Once you start down that road there is no turning back.

Ray

[trakon2002]

Ray,

Thanks for your advice, we are both rather frustrated by this.
I had a long chat with her and here is what I have come up with:
The NSO BC and LCRO BC have matching information.
The Baptismal record does specifically show her DOB and name to be what she was told throughout her life to be correct.
SHe says her school records also match the baprismal record.
She has copies of the BC's and Baptismal and can get the school records.
She says it is unlikely she can get witnesses to her birth that can attest to date that are not family members as the mid-wife has passed away.
She has verified that she can get her name misspelling corrected without lawyer involved but seem to be asking for a higher price to do this than I have seen posted by others for clerical error correction by LCRO.
I contacted USCIS and after getting several people who keep giving me canned answers, i was able to get someone to address the issue down to its basic's - if I am filing form I129F what should I put in block 4 for DOB - The answer i got was the USCIS see's the birth certificate as legal DOB. I added she was using a dob she was told to be true all her life and what if this comes up in investigation and interview, i was told to have supporting documents why she was using that DOB. And as to block 7 other names used - I was told if she has used a different spelling of her first name in her life to list it there and to be able to answer why.
So does this sound reasonable, have her use her birth certificate info from now on for passport, NIB, CFO and to file petition with it, stating different first name spelling and keeping copies of baptismal record and school records as documentation why in the past she used a different dob if it comes up?
If you think we should change BC, do you have any recommendations for reputable, fairly priced attorney?
I know both of us are not happy going this route as I feel at this point we will never get through this process and she is frustrated as well and we havent even started. I cant seem to get any diffinitive answers on these discrepensies from the norm from anywhere, yet I am told this is common problem.
At this point we dont know what to do and where to start...
Thankyou
Carl

[Ray]

So does this sound reasonable, have her use her birth certificate info from now on for passport, NIB, CFO and to file petition with it, stating different first name spelling and keeping copies of baptismal record and school records as documentation why in the past she used a different dob if it comes up?

Maybe, but make sure you have all the facts first.

The NSO and LCRO birth certificates are essentially carbon copies, so your info indicates that the correct document was submitted to the NSO by the local officials.

Since the baptismal record shows the “correct” name and birth date, the logical assumption would be that the birth record was (1) completed with errors and (2) late registered.

When a birth is recorded after about one month from the birth date, it is considered “late registered” and is usually annotated as such on the official NSO copy of the birth certificate. From my experience, I would guess that as many as 50% of births in the Philippines may be “late registered”. In my wife’s case, her birth was not officially recorded until she was about 26 years old. She never needed her birth certificate all the way through college and her dad registered it late because she needed it for a passport. However, she was baptized approximately 5 weeks after birth. Since the Catholic Church has a reputation for good record-keeping and because her baptism was recorded so close to her birth, the baptismal record would logically be recognized as the more accurate document when discrepancies arose between the two documents. The baptismal record shows both the date of birth and date baptized, along with other vital information such as parentage.

In your fiancée’s case, if her baptismal record shows that she was born in Nov 1986 and the date of baptism is shortly after the birth date, then her official birth record could not have been recorded before she was baptized and “probably” recorded much later in life. Because all government records in the Philippines are recorded in English, and because of some illiteracy in the past, those official documents sometimes get garbled when a local bureaucrat is verbally asking questions of the reporting person in the local dialect and simultaneously typing the document in English. When the reporting party is asked to verify the info and sign the document, they may not even know how to read English so they just sign. And because few children were born in a hospital, the births were often not recorded in a timely manner by the parents or attending midwife.

Anyway, that’s why there are so many late-registered and erroneous birth records over there. The local government and the U.S. Embassy are aware of the problem and are used to dealing with these issues. The CIS and State Department routinely accept baptismal records and joint affidavits as acceptable secondary evidence of true birth data as do the DFA passport offices in the PI.

As far as that joint affidavit I mentioned, it can also be a relative or family member swearing to the correct info. They don’t have to be two people who were present at her birth, but only someone who knew the family at the time and can attest to the correct name spelling and date of birth (or at least the month and year). In my wife’s case, I think the two signers of the affidavit were a relative and a neighbor. Even a godparent present at her baptism may be able to testify that she was born in 1986 and not 1988. Perhaps a good local notary or any LCRO official could advise her further on the joint affidavit issue if she has a phobia for attorneys

Again, have her send you copies (preferably certified originals) of the NSO birth cert, LCRO birth cert, and baptismal certificate so you can sort it all out. You will likely need copies anyway for your records. The dates that the birth was actually recorded and the date of baptism may be very important to the factual record and help you to decide whether or not to use the erroneous birth date and name on your paperwork.

I can’t recommend a Filipino attorney but I will warn you that many lawyers will charge her a big premium if they know that there is a foreign fiancée or foreign visa is involved. So she should deal with any attorneys as if you didn’t exist. She can also pay for a consultation with a knowledgeable attorney for legal advice without hiring him to change her BC.  

Ray