Lu Zeidan

To

        Raymond Voith

Hi Ray- The biggest issues we see are with the Iraqis (who are the majority of our students now). Since in Iraq they do not go by family or last names but rather by the first name followed by the father’s name- those who issues the visas attempted to create a family name by using the grandfather’s first name as the person’s family name. Needless to say that wreaked all kinds of havoc when the different members of the same family have different last names. However, that’s another thing. Iraqis are so used to providing their full name as first name then father’s name that they don’t write their grandfatehr’s name anywhere. Unfortunately their legal document to get into the US has their first name then the grandfather’s name as the last name. So when they sign in in our classes and everywhere, they put a first name (with various possible spellings different from the official one-expected since they go by a different alphabet so try to spell their name phonetically in English with varying success-, and then they write a last name we do not recognize since it is not the one we have in our documents).  To simplify matters, we tell everyone, the name in your I-94 visa is the one that you use in the US for the length of the first 5 years until you are a citizen and only then are you asked if you want to change your name.

In Burma people do not use last names but everyone has a first name that is at least two parts.  So if a person’s name is Neh Meh then what they did is that they made Neh the person’s firs name and Meh the person’s last name. another mess since now EACH member of the family has a different last name. and the full meaning of the name is in both parts in Burmese – anywaaaay

It’s a different story in each group we get –a nd sometimes more than one scenario per country as well – so we just want to make sure they can write their official names that are on their documents and local and international IDs since there is no hope of those changing anytime soon!

Interesting world you’ve stepped into, isn’t it?